28 Pages.org & Bob Graham / CBS News – 2016-04-10 01:24:22
60 Minutes to Report on 28 Pages Said to Link 9/11, Saudi Arabia
ACTION ALERT: 60 Minutes to Report on 28 Pages
Said to Link 9/11, Saudi Arabia
28 Pages.org
(April 8, 2016) — The drive to declassify 28 pages from a congressional intelligence inquiry that detail specific indications of foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers is about to be put under a powerful spotlight, as 60 Minutes will air a segment on the topic this Sunday, April 10 at 7 pm ET/PT.
According to the CBS News preview of the story, Steve Kroft interviewed former senator Bob Graham, former congressman and CIA director Porter Goss, former 9/11 Commission members Bob Kerrey and John Lehman, lawyers representing 9/11 family members suing Saudi Arabia and former congressman Tim Roemer, who served on both the inquiry that produced the 28 pages and the 9/11 Commission that followed that inquiry.
Report to Air on Eve of Obama Visit to Saudi Arabia
The high-profile 60 Minutes segment—which is positioned for high viewership as it follows coverage of the Masters Tournament—comes at a particularly sensitive time for the White House, as the president will visit Saudi Arabia on April 21. 9/11 family members say that, in 2009 and 2011, Obama assured them he would declassify the 28 pages, yet that promise has gone unfulfilled.
Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry that wrote the 28 pages, has said, “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.”
He has also said that, by shielding Saudi Arabia from scrutiny of its sponsorship of Sunni extremism, the continued classification has encouraged their continued sponsorship and paved the way for the rise of ISIS.
Congressman Thomas Massie described the experience of reading the pages as “shocking” and said, “I had to stop every couple pages and…try to rearrange my understanding of history. It challenges you to rethink everything.”
Congressmen Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Massie are leading an effort in the US House of Representatives to declassify the 28 pages: Their House Resolution 14, which urges the president to declassify the material, has 41 cosponsors. A similar measure, Senate Bill 1471, was introduced by Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden and cosponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand.
Review of 28 Pages Nears Its Third Year
In response to heightened media attention to the 28 pages in September 2014, the White House said the president, earlier that summer, tasked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper with conducting an intelligence community review of the 28 pages for potential declassification.
Inexplicably, and with essentially no follow-up by national media to date, that review of just 28 pages has already taken far longer than the entire, unprecedented congressional inquiry that produced them. As we reported here last summer, in just six months the 2002 inquiry:
* Reviewed nearly a half million pages of documents from intelligence agencies and other sources
* Conducted roughly 300 interviews
* Participated in briefings and panel discussions involving about 600 people from the intelligence community, other government departments, state and local entities, foreign government representatives and other individuals
* Held 13 closed-door sessions and nine public hearings
* Dueled with intelligence agencies and the White House over many aspects of the inquiry’s undertaking, including requests for information and the format of the final report
* Wrote, edited and revised an 838-page report on the inquiry’s findings
A separate evaluation, under a process called Mandatory Declassification Review, was initiated in 2014 by an attorney representing investigative journalists Dan Christensen, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. Like the review requested by the president, it is still pending as the Obama administration nears its final months.
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Top Secret “28 Pages” May Hold Clues about Saudi Support for 9/11 Hijackers
Bob Graham / CBS News
(April 8, 2016) — Current and former members of Congress, US officials, 9/11 Commissioners and the families of the attack’s victims want 28 top-secret pages of a congressional report released. Bob Graham, the former Florida governor, Democratic US Senator and onetime chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, says the key section of a top secret report he helped author should be declassified to shed light on possible Saudi support for some of the 9/11 hijackers.
Graham was co-chair of Congress’ bipartisan “Joint Inquiry” into intelligence failures surrounding the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that issued the report in 2003. Graham speaks to Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, April 10 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Graham and his Joint Inquiry co-chair in the House, former Representative Porter Goss (R-FL) — who went on to be director of the CIA — say the 28 pages were excised from their report by the Bush Administration in the interest of national security.
Graham wouldn’t discuss the classified contents, but says the 28 pages outline a network of people he believes supported hijackers in the US He tells Kroft he believes the hijackers were “substantially” supported by Saudi Arabia. Asked if the support was from government, rich people or charities, the former senator replies, “all of the above.”
“I think its implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” says Graham.
Graham and others think the reason for classifying the pages was to protect the US relationship with ally Saudi Arabia.
In addition to Graham and Goss, Kroft also speaks to former 9/11 Commission members US Sen. Bob Kerrey and former Navy Secretary John Lehman; lawyers for family members of attack victims suing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; and to Tim Roemer, former Democratic US Representative from Indiana who was the only person to serve on both Congress’ Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission.
All of the former US officials have read the redacted pages. Roemer says it’s time to let everyone know what’s in the top secret documents.
“Look, the Saudis have even said they’re for declassifying it. We should declassify it,” he tells Kroft. “Is it sensitive . . . a bit of a can of worms or some snakes crawling out of there? Yes,” says Roemer.
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Why Didn’t Bush/Cheney Prevent 9/11?
John Kiriakou Provides Some Surprising Background
TheRealNews
(April 24, 2015) — On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Kiriakou and Paul Jay discuss the role of the White House in ignoring the CIA’s warning that “something terrible” was coming
This thorough and absolutely astounding 21-minute report has be disabled to prevent cross postings but it is well worth visiting online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdCAKYYH3Yo
