Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
In light of the recently observed 13th anniversary of the events on 9/11/01, I read an article this week that caught my eye. According to reports, there is a 28 page section of the 9/11 Commission report that has never been released publicly and remains secret to this day. Indeed, Congressmen must go through numerous security reviews before they can read the document in a secure room in Washington, D.C.
What kind of secret and clandestine information can be found in such a guarded document? Since it is top-secret, we can only go by the reviews of people who have read the report. What is found in that report may surprise you in light of its level of secrecy.
“On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol’s new underground visitors’ center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files. One of those files is titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” It is twenty-eight pages long. In 2002, the Administration of George W. Bush excised those pages from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.”
“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch maintains. Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is “very disturbing,” and that “the real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through.” Now, in a rare example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution requesting that the Obama Administration declassify the pages.” Readersupportednews
In the current political climate, any issue that has some bi-partisan support should be looked at more closely. If the accounts of Rep. Jones and Rep. Lynch are to believed, what would be the possible reasons why these 28 pages have not been fully declassified? In a town like Washington, D.C., it seems like it doesn’t take much to classify information and keep it from public dissemination. However, once something is classified, it often takes years and in many cases, decades to get the information into the American public’s hands. So, in one sense, Washington doesn’t need real reasons before it classifies documents.
As someone who has witnessed a military accident report kept classified for approximately 50 years, this 13 year period of time does not sound so bad. But when we find out that the report may have been classified to prevent embarrassment to the Saudi royal family and our Government, 13 years sounds like 12 years too long. Even the Saudi’s have called for the full release of the secret 28 pages.
“Twenty-eight blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has declared. “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages.” RSN
According to Philip Zelikow, the Director of the 9/11 Commission Staff, the 28 pages were merely unvetted reports and accusations. “According to Zelikow, what they found does not substantiate the arguments made by the Joint Inquiry and by the 9/11 families in the lawsuit against the Saudis. He characterized the twenty-eight pages as “an agglomeration of preliminary, unvetted reports” concerning Saudi involvement. “They were wild accusations that needed to be checked out,” he said.
Zelikow and his staff were ultimately unable to prove any official Saudi complicity in the attacks. A former staff member of the 9/11 Commission who is intimately familiar with the material in the twenty-eight pages recommends against their declassification, warning that the release of inflammatory and speculative information could “ramp up passions” and damage U.S.-Saudi relations.” RSN
If indeed the information could ramp up passions, according to Mr. Zelikow, is that enough to keep it under top-secret wraps for 13 years? It could be argued that hiding the information from the public actually causes more problems than the ones that Mr. Zelikow is trying to avoid. Secrecy tends to fan the flames of conspiracy theorists. If the Saudi’s are calling for the information that is considered to be harmful to Saudi relations, why should the information still be hidden from public inspection?
Thomas Kean, the former Chairman of the 9/11 Commission has read the report and he does not understand why it is still kept secret. Of course, he also is confused why the interviews of Former President, Bill Clinton and then current President George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney are also still kept secret.
“Thomas Kean remembers finally having the opportunity to read those twenty-eight pages after he became chairman of the 9/11 Commission—“so secret that I had to get all of my security clearances and go into the bowels of Congress with someone looking over my shoulder.” He also remembers thinking at the time that most of what he was reading should never have been kept secret. But the focus on the twenty-eight pages obscures the fact that many important documents are still classified—“a ton of stuff,” Kean told me, including, for instance, the 9/11 Commission’s interviews with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Bill Clinton. “I don’t know of a single thing in our report that should not be public after ten years,” Kean said.” RSN
When one remembers the turmoil and destruction and the emotional outpouring that were a result of the actions of the terrorists on 9/11, I can understand why the information was initially classified. However, after a year or two the citizens of this country deserved a full and complete record of what the 9/11 Commission did or did not find. A link to the “full” Commission report can be found here.
While there can be valid reasons for a government to classify information and hide it from its own citizens, that information needs to be disseminated as soon as possible. Thirteen years for information that may just “ramp up passions”, is not a valid time frame. This information and all of the information left out of the 9/11 Commission Report should be declassified as quickly as possible, with no redactions.
Any and all information that concerns one of the most important days in our country’s history should be in the people’s hands. Without it, a skeptical citizenry will make up its own mind and Washington, D.C. may not like their answer.
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If we take the “conspiracy” word out of the equation then the truth can be learned and told without some of us thinking that those who believe the truth are really right wing or left wing conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy is sort of a C Word and is uncivil.
So, we know that the U.S. Government through its various agencies is in League with Saudi Arabia. I do not mean League of Nations. League is kind of similar to the C word but the rules of civility would rule that word out. Now, what agencies of the U.S. government were dealing in and around Saudi Arabia back on Nine Eleven? Did we have any rogue agents perhaps not happy with Bushie who were Koch Brother types who wanted to have a war on terror? Did the rogue boys from the CIA or NSA or KGB conspire with some Saudi government tentheads to put together the plane hijackings?
The next step is whether, if we believe the rogue agents theory or the direct CIA Chief involvement, then who else in the Bushie administration knew? George know?
Why would they do such a thing? Well, we have been at war ever since and now we have these new terrorists who behead people that we must go after. We just must. Or is it really a must? Can we not just isolate some of these pirate territories and make them pay big if they harbor pirates and terrorists?
One must go back to Saturday Night Live Show about thirty years ago for the definitive answer:
[music]
Bomb, bomb, bomb…. bomb bomb Iran!
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iraaan!
Oh, bomb Iraaaann!
I will take my staaaand!
Rockin and a rollin, rockin and a reelin
Bomb Iran!
–
We can thank Roseann Roseann O’Danna for that one. Now, one cannot just easlily substitute names like Pakistan in there and have it come out musical anymore. We need a new song for each pirate territory.
Ok , nuff said. Or barked.
indio007, yes there are theories about conspiracies and there are also conspiracy facts.
Conspiracy theory = CIA term specifically invented for the purpose of attacking anyone calling out the Warren Commission report.
And that’s no conspiracy theory. It’s CIA memo# 1035-960, “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report”
As an Honorary Leftist, I can state with certainty that the 28 pages clearly prove that: 1) Bush did it; 2) the Koch Brothers funded it; 3) Masterminded by Cheney; 4) With help from Big Oil; 5) And carried out by fundamentalist Christians. Oops. 6) With wall-to-wall coverage by Fox News.
The fact that no one has leaked the 28 pages is PROOF of the vastness and power of the Right Wing Conspiracy to mislead, defraud and subvert the Constitution.
Here’s a nice quote from James Risen’s State of War:
“CIA sources also say that the agency has had strong evidence that some of the intelligence it has shared with Saudi security officials has ended up in the hands of al Qaeda operatives. For example, the CIA has in the past given the Saudis copies of NSA communications intercepts, which included conversations among suspected al Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia. But after the CIA gave the intercepts to the Saudis, the suspects quickly stopped using the communications that the Americans had been monitoring, making it far more difficult to track the terrorists.”
Risen does note that a state turning a blind eye to terrorism and a state supporting terrorism are two different things, but there seems to be a gray area between them.
Here’s a pretty good analysis of the “no planes” at WTC on 9/11. The article doesn’t include analysis of the “no plane” crashed on the Pentalawn – and not at Shanksburg, Penn/ either.
http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/
Releasing the ’28 pages’ would pollute the jury pool re
911 victims lawsuit
http://articles.philly.com/2014-07-02/business/51005807_1_saudi-arabia-saudi-government-cozen-o-connor
The U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead Monday to a lawsuit by victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the government of Saudi Arabia, alleging it indirectly financed al-Qaeda in the years before the hijackings.
Never trust a fruit with a tent head.
Wow, so this spoiled rich Saudi prince thinks he can just leave the scene, when he’s being ticketed? The cop actually used some restraint after his foot got run over. The Prince could’ve been tased or shot.
In the old days, when men were men and America was full of p—, vinegar and testosterone, one might have substituted Indian for Saudi Arabian. America would have been bathing in petroleum for the price of a quiver of neutron bombs.
“You can’t go home again”
― Thomas Wolfe
I like openness. Not secrets. Watch the NYPD ticket Prince Sultan Junior. Junior runs over the cops foot, then………….Page 29 and counting?
Interesting and timely article. It is worth reading James Risen’s State of War (Risen is being prosecuted by the Obama Administration over his refusal to reveal sources in that book, and the Bush Administration tried to halt publication). In particular, Chapter 8, “In Denial: Oil, Terrorism and Saudi Arabia” is revealing. The 9/11 money trail is discussed and evidence is presented (such as bank cards from Saudi and Kuwaiti banks recovered from Abu Zubaydah in 2002) that these banks were the hub of Al Qaeda financing for years, and with the knowledge of the royal family.
We really should be supporting a transition away from a dictatorship and towards a British-style constitutional monarchy with an elected independent parliament and prime minister running the country.
The architects and engineers charge “controlled demolition” employing “Super-Thermite” about which doubt has been introduced by the theory of “dustification” as the result of a “directed energy weapon.” Reality is inexorably becoming murkier and murkier; by design. First the case, then the counter – Super-Thermite, then DEW.
Below, a narrative, practical demonstration of the SOP for intel and counter-intel:
“Some have suggested that much of the structural steel of the World Trade Center skyscrapers was turned to dust, or “dustified” – a term used by Judy Wood, the primary proponent of this hypothesis – with some type of directed energy weapon (DEW). Some of the observations cited by Wood include the voluminous dust created during the Twin Towers’ destruction, the “craters” in WTC 5 and 6, “toasted” cars, and small holes in glass windows.
While Wood and AE911truth agree that the official story of an “inevitable” collapse by gravity alone is impossible because it conflicts with laws of physics, we completely differ on the mechanism of the destruction. Crucially, once there is proof and consensus that the official story violates elementary laws of physics, our major scientific task has been accomplished. The remaining task is the political challenge of mobilizing support for a legitimate investigation.
Of course, the science of the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 can be advanced beyond the mere conclusion that the official story must be false, but it is imperative that anyone seriously advancing understanding of the mechanisms of collapse hew closely to scientific methodology. This is crucial to earn the 9/11 Truth Movement the public respect it deserves, rather than to cast it into the role of perpetrating “junk science.”
The scientific method requires us to look at all the available evidence and then assess various explanations for their ability to account for the evidence. At some point, just as in pure science, the inferior explanations must be discarded if there is to be continued progress in an investigation. It is our opinion that the DEW hypothesis is not just weak; it is not supported by the evidence at all. We provide only a general discussion here, referring the reader to references for a thorough understanding.”
“May you live in interesting times.”
– Chinese curse from England, Oops!
I am surprised not to see Senator Graham’s name in this.
He is the one who began the movement to get the 28 pages un-redacted and made public.
There are three mainstream media videos quoting CIA agents, and the co-chair of the Senate investigation (NOT the 9/11 Commission).
The Saudis purportedly financed 15 of the 19 hijackers.
Given this Administration’s world-class transparency and whistle-blower protections, we can all look forward to seeing these missing 28 pages along with all other redactions within the next hour or so… Wait for it…
As important as I see the release of this information, I don’t think it will happen now as the gov’t is wanting to bring the Saudis into the anti-ISIL effort.
“S. N. Smith (@smithottawa)
old news”
The ANNIVERSARY is old news? Seems “real time” to me.
As a bonus, I’m not going to call you a name despite my exponentially animated, visceral reaction.
You should be found in contempt.
The blogger should find this commenter in aggravated contempt with malice.
Paul C. Schulte:
“rafflaw – we do not need a secret report to know that something was hinky with the Saudis. They still are hinky.”
The report is about Bush family ties to the Saudis. You know, your buddy W and his Saudi friends who he kept being friends with even though they were funding the people who attacked us?
Pogo, I would say “No,” and “Yes.” Politics is the Art of Lying to Control. Half of what politicians at any level of government say are complete lies, and there is no way to tell for sure which half it is, so both should be considered probably untrue until Reality exposes the truth. And whatever they say, someone won’t like it, whether it’s true, partially true, totally untrue, or irrelevant.
True enough Mike. The Saudis and the US have been backing ISIS with money, weapons and training. Now ISIS is a good bogeyman for war against Syria.
No earning that peace prize for Obama when he can make trillions of dollars for war contractor buddies, including Richard Cheney. Also, the US knew 5 months ago where James Foley was. They did not attempt to rescue him.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/government-threatened-foley-family-ransom-payments-mother-slain/story?id=25453963