A long-classified U.S. report released Friday found that some of the 9/11 hijackers were in contact with and received support from individuals likely connected to the Saudi government.
Known as the “28 pages,” the secret document was part of a 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks and has been classified since the report’s completion, despite repeated calls for its release. The document, which the administration finally delivered to Congress earlier Friday, actually contains 29 pages of material, plus a letter from then-CIA Director George Tenet.
“While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government,” the document says.
The pages also say that the inquiry obtained information “indicating that Saudi Government officials in the United States may have other ties to al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups,” but the commission that authored the document acknowledged that much of the info “remains speculative and yet to be independently verified.”
Saudi Ambassador to the United States Abdullah Al-Saud put out a statement after the document’s release Friday welcoming its publication, though he didn’t address the details it contains.
“Several government agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, have investigated the contents of the ’28 Pages’ and have confirmed that neither the Saudi government, nor senior Saudi officials, nor any person acting on behalf of the Saudi government provided any support or encouragement for these attacks,” he 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.”
“It should be clear that this Joint Inquiry has made no final determinations as to the reliability or sufficiency of the information,” the report says.
On the one hand, the report notes, it is possible that these kinds of connections could suggest “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi Government. On the other hand, it is also possible that further investigation of these allegations could reveal legitimate, and innocent, explanations for these associations.”
The report also criticizes the lack of effective intelligence-sharing in the U.S. government, highlighting an episode where a CIA memorandum “which discusses alleged financial connections between the September 11 hijackers, Saudi Government officials, and members of the Saudi Royal Family” was placed into an FBI case file and never forwarded to FBI headquarters until the memo was discovered by the inquiry.
It also says there was a lack of emphasis on intelligence-gathering directed at Saudis in the U.S. in the time before the attacks.
“Prior to September 11th, the FBI apparently did not focus investigative resources on [redacted] Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.'”
But the report also references instances where the Saudi government was “uncooperative” in counterterrorism investigations before and after 9/11.
“A number of FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the Joint Inquiry about a lack of Saudi cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September 11 attacks,” citing one New York FBI agent who said “the Saudis have been useless and obstructionist for years.”
The report details one post-9/11 episode in which an FBI agent couldn’t get the Saudi government to provide information on Saudi nationals despite providing copies of the subjects’ Saudi passports.
Under pressure from the victims’ families and lawmakers, President Barack Obama said in April his administration would declassify the 28 pages.
Sources told CNN ahead of the report’s release that intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the State Department had all reviewed and approved the release of the pages with “minimal redactions.” But the report Congress put out had multiple inked-out sections.
Still, the release of the pages on Friday was welcomed by New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who has co-sponsored a bill that opens the door for families of 9/11 victims to sue foreign states and financial partners of terrorism.
“Preliminary readings show that there may well have been Saudi involvement in the terror of 9/11 both in the Saudi government and within the Saudi country, within Saudi Arabia,” he told reporters in New York.
“The families who I have fought for long and hard now will be able to go to court, and soon, and if the Saudi government was complicit in 9/11 they should pay the price to the families who deserve justice,” he continued. “And they should pay the price so no other government will think of playing footsie with terrorists the way the Saudi government may well have done in 2001.”
Jerry Goldman, a lawyer who represents families of victims in a class-action suit seeking to sue Saudi Arabia, said ahead of the report’s release that his clients were pleased the pages were being made public. “The families are happy just as the American people should be happy that information that has been kept hidden for well over a decade is finally coming to light,” he said.
One of those who looked forward to reading the pages is Terry Strada, who has been pushing for the right to sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged involvement in the attack. Her husband, Tom, was working on the 104th floor of the North Tower when the planes struck. The couple’s third child had been born just four days earlier.
“The American people deserve this just as much as the 9/11 families deserve it, but we’re the ones that are suffering by not having them released,” Strada said.
Also welcoming the report’s release was former Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, who has long called for the documents to be made public.
“The information in the 28 pages reinforces the belief that the 19 hijackers — most of whom spoke little English, had limited education and had never before visited the United States — did not act alone in perpetrating the sophisticated 9/11 plot,” Graham said in a statement. “It suggests a strong linkage between those terrorists and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Saudi charities, and other Saudi stakeholders. The American people should be concerned about these links.”
The Saudi government itself had repeated called for the pages to be made public so that it could respond to any allegations, which it has long called unfounded.
“We’ve been saying since 2003 that the pages should be released,” said Nail Al-Jubeir, director of communications for the Saudi Embassy, ahead of Friday’s developments. “They will show everyone that there is no there there.”
After the pages were posted online Friday afternoon, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a statement saying that their declassification and release did not constitute a national security risk.
But it noted that the decision to authorize the release “does not indicate the Intelligence Community’s agreement” with the report’s “accuracy or concurrence with any information it contains.”
In the wake of the release, the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee issued a joint statement endorsing the declassification of the pages.
Chairman Devin Nunes added, however, that “it’s important to note that this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community.”
Sens. Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the chair and top Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement that they agreed with the decision to declassify the report. But they cautioned, “These pages include unconfirmed allegations and raw reporting and have been the subject of conspiracy theories for years.”
They called on the public to review related documents from the director of national intelligence that “debunk many of the allegations contained in the declassified section of the report.”
The concluded, “We need to put an end to conspiracy theories and idle speculation that do nothing to shed light on the 9/11 attacks.”