Saudi officials hope the release of top secret pages of an early congressional inquiry into 9/11 will end allegations about Saudi complicity in the attacks.
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The release Friday of a long-classified congressional report on possible ties between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorist plot has the potential to do lasting damage to the USA relationship with the oil-rich Arab kingdom.
“While in the United States, some of the September 11th hijackers were in contact with or received assistance from, individuals who may be connected with the Saudi government”, reads the report, which added that Federal Bureau of Investigation sources believed at least two of those individuals were Saudi intelligence agents. Lawmakers and relatives of victims of the attacks, who believe that Saudi links to the attackers were not thoroughly investigated, campaigned for years to get the pages released.
The United States probed links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 attacks, finding multiple suspicions but no proven ties, documents declassified Friday showed.
The document, a section of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks, had been kept secret out of concern that it might fray diplomatic relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
However, the office of the Director of National Intelligence said on Friday its agreement to release the report did not mean that the intelligence community agrees with the pages’ accuracy or concurs with the provided information.
California representative Devin Nunes emphasized that the evidence presented in the pages constitute “unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the intelligence committee”.
Saudi officials have pointed to statements from U.S. officials supporting their position, including an interview CIA Director John Brennan did with the Saudi-owned Arabic news channel Al Arabiya on June 12 in which he said the 28 pages were part of “a very preliminary review”.
The House intelligence panel released it a few hours later. “There is information. that at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers”.
The report – classified in December 2002 on orders of then president George W Bush – is nearly certain to feed public suspicions that the Saudi government gave extensive support to Osama bin Laden before 9/11, and perhaps even directly to the 9/11 plotters themselves, as the USA government looked the other way.
The classification of the “28 pages” had sparked speculation that the hijackers had received official support from the Saudi government.
“The surprise in the 28 pages is that there is no surprise”, al-Jubier said. Schiff warned that the committee would received a “redacted report” for release.
“The American public deserved to see the reports’ declassified contents and now they can”, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said investigations by the CIA and FBI debunk numerous allegations in the declassified pages.
“The FBI believes that they investigated all of these leads in the years after 9/11”.
Former US president George W Bush classified the chapter to protect intelligence sources and methods, although he also probably did not want to upset US relations with Saudi Arabia, a close US ally.
The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, released in July 2004, concluded that the Saudi government had no connection whatsoever to the attacks.
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Family members who lost loved ones in the attacks have sued Saudi Arabia over its alleged role in the attacks and called for the passage of a law that would revoke sovereign immunity for diplomats from countries that support terrorism.
