Given America’s long-running battle with Islamist terrorists — a battle that won’t end soon — we need to know which countries support terrorists under the table. Especially when those countries are supposed to be allies.
So it’s bizarre that the U.S. government still refuses to release the infamous 28 pages of the 2002 report from the joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. These classified pages supposedly implicate some Saudi officials in assisting the hijackers.
As former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., co-chairman of the inquiry, recently wrote in the Washington Post while urging that the pages be released: “Should we believe that the 19 hijackers (15 of them Saudi), most of whom spoke little English and had never before visited the United States — acted alone? Did the hijackers have foreign support? If so, who provided it?”
Why is critical information that might answer these questions still being suppressed?
“It all seems to be motivated by a desire to protect the Saudis,” says Sean Carter, the lead litigator in a lawsuit brought by 9/11 families and insurers that argues that Saudi government employees supported the hijackers, while Saudi-backed charities funded terrorists.
Indeed, protecting the Saudis has been a bipartisan exercise ever since 9/11.
The Bush administration, which had close ties to the Saudi royal family, classified the 28 pages. The Obama administration still hasn’t released the 28 pages after nearly two years of review. An impatient Senate just unanimously passed a bill that would let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot, but the White House has threatened to veto the legislation.
Clearly President Barack Obama doesn’t want to worsen his touchy relationship with the monarchy, which is finally sharing intelligence information with America. But with oil prices low and the Islamist terrorist threat high, this excuse won’t wash.
Here’s some of what we know, according to an April segment on “60 Minutes” that interviewed several members of the congressional inquiry, all of whom want the pages released: Two weeks after two of the Saudi hijackers got to Los Angeles, a Saudi national, Omar al-Bayoumi, who is listed in FBI files before 9/11 as a Saudi agent, helped them move to San Diego, get housing, and enroll in flight school.
Bayoumi’s spiritual adviser, ensconced at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, was Fahad al-Thumairy, an official of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs (which was known to support Islamic extremists). Thumairy was deported in 2002 because of suspected terrorist links.
Bayoumi also had links with an imam at a San Diego mosque — the infamous Anwar al-Awlaki, later a key al-Qaida figure in Yemen who was taken out by a U.S. missile.
If this information is unvetted, why wasn’t it further investigated by the 9/11 Commission? And can we really believe that no senior Saudis were aware of Bayoumi’s actions?
Relations with the Saudis do still matter. But how can there be any solid alliance with a kingdom that spends billions of dollars to export an intolerant brand of Islam — and whose religious charities may still be funding bad guys?
Certainly, such an alliance is based on quicksand until we have clarified whether any Saudi official helped destroy the twin towers.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Email: trubin@phillynews.com
