WASHINGTON (TIP): A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the September 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support to hijackers — and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism.
New claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of al-Qaida, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to September 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed have tried unsuccessfully to declassify. “I think it is the right thing to do,” said representative Stephen F Lynch, democrat of Massachusetts and an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”
White House officials say the administration has undertaken a review on whether to release the pages. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former senator Bob Graham of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since Bush ordered it classified in 2002. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Graham said last month as he pressed for the pages to be made public.