The former allegations were never substantiated by later US investigations into the terrorist attacks.
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Congress on Friday released the “28 pages”, a previously classified document that examined possible connections between the Saudi government and the September 11 hijackers.
Former Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks, at his office in Miami Lakes, Fla., March 26, 2015.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, however, said, “This information does not change the assessment of the us government that there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaeda”.
-Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers in California, was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer.
It identified individuals who helped the hijackers get apartments, open bank accounts, attend local mosques and get flight lessons.
Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaida trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by US interrogators.
The yearlong Congressional investigation also expressed anger about gaps in US intelligence about Saudi Arabia’s possible links to terror, deeming them “unacceptable” given the “magnitude and immediacy of the potential risk to USA national security”. “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”.
“Prior to September 11th, the Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently did not focus investigative resources on [redacted] Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally'”.
Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator from Florida, was one of the co-chairman of the congressional inquiry that produced the pages back in 2002.
Last year, a panel of experts selected by Congress reviewed the FBI’s response to the 9/11 Commissions’ recommendations.
Abdullah Al-Saud, Saudi Arabai’s ambassador to the United States, said in a statement: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomes the release of the redacted pages from the 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry”.
The report concluded that “Saudi Arabia has always been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior officials within the Saudi government funded al Qaeda”. He denied any connections to 9/11 hijackers, even after presented with phone records connecting him to the duo, according to a New York Times report from June.
Graham also said he hoped the release would pave the way for more documents to be disclosed.
The Washington Post reported that when the 9/11 Commission released their final report in 2004, it claimed that the Saudi government had “turned a blind eye” to “charities that funded the attack but was not directly involved”.
“Most of what we know about 9/11 is from the investigations that were done in southern California and that’s the primarily focus of the 28 pages”.
But top United States intelligence officials who approved releasing the report, as families of some of the 3,000 victims of the attacks have long demanded, emphasised that they didn’t consider it accurate or reliable.
Despite this revelation and subsequent attempts by the Saudi government and some USA officials to completely discredit the validity of the claims contained within the 28 pages, a number of other investigators remain puzzled by the exact role played by individuals like Fahad al-Thumairy in the September 11 attacks.
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The pages, sent to Congress by the Obama administration, have been the subject of much speculation over what they might reveal about the Saudi government’s involvement in the attacks masterminded by terrorist Osama bin Laden when he led al-Qaeda.
