Philip Shenon writes:
A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission,
breaking dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday he believes
there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support
network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move
quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the
2001 terrorist attack.
The comments by John H Lehman, an
investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan
administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10
commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an
exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19
hijackers on 9/11.
“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi
individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the
Saudi government,” Lehman said in an interview, suggesting that the commission
may have made a mistake by not stating that explicitly in its final report.
“Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”
He was critical of a statement
released late last month by the former chairman and vice chairman of the
commission, who urged the Obama administration to be cautious about releasing
the full congressional report on the Saudis and 9/11 –“the 28 pages”, as they are widely known in
Washington – because they contained “raw, unvetted” material that might smear
innocent people.
The 9/11 commission chairman,
former Republican governor Tom Kean of New Jersey, and vice-chairman, former
Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, praised Saudi Arabia as,
overall, “an ally of the United States in combatting terrorism” and said the
commission’s investigation, which came after the congressional report was
written, had identified only one Saudi government official – a former diplomat
in the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles – as being “implicated in the 9/11 plot
investigation”.
The diplomat, Fahad al-Thumairy, who was deported from the
US but was never charged with a crime, was suspected of involvement in a
support network for two Saudi hijackers who had lived in San Diego the year
before the attacks.
In the interview Wednesday,
Lehman said Kean and Hamilton’s statement that only one Saudi government
employee was “implicated” in supporting the hijackers in California and
elsewhere was “a game of semantics” and that the commission had been aware of
at least five Saudi government officials who were strongly suspected of
involvement in the terrorists’ support network.
“They may not have been indicted,
but they were certainly implicated,” he said. “There was an awful lot of
circumstantial evidence.”
Although Lehman said he did not believe that the Saudi
royal family or the country’s senior civilian leadership had any role in
supporting al-Qaida or the 9/11 plot, he recalled that a focus of the criminal
investigation after 9/11 was upon employees of the Saudi ministry of Islamic
affairs, which had sponsored Thumairy for his job in Los Angeles and has long
been suspected of ties to extremist groups.
He said “the 28 pages”, which
were prepared by a special House-Senate committee investigating pre-9/11
intelligence failures, reviewed much of the same material and ought to be made
public as soon as possible, although possibly with redactions to remove the
names of a few Saudi suspects who were later cleared of any involvement in the
terrorist attacks.
Lehman has support among some of
the other commissioners, although none have spoken out so bluntly in
criticizing the Saudis.
A Democratic commissioner, former congressman Tim
Roemer of Indiana, said he wants the congressional report released to end some
of the wild speculation about what is in the 28 pages and to see if parts of
the inquiry should be reopened.
When it comes to the Saudis, he said, “We still
haven’t gotten to the bottom of what happened on 9/11.”
Another panel member, speaking on condition of anonymity
for fear of offending the other nine, said the 28 pages should be released even
though they could damage the commission’s legacy – “fairly or unfairly” – by
suggesting lines of investigation involving the Saudi government that were
pursued by Congress but never adequately explored by the commission.
“I think we were tough on the
Saudis, but obviously not tough enough,” the commissioner said. “I know some
members of the staff felt we went much too easy on the Saudis. I didn’t really
know the extent of it until after the report came out.”
The commissioner said the renewed
public debate could force a spotlight on a mostly unknown chapter of the
history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s
staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in
the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi
officials – especially at lower levels of the government – were part of an
al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after
they arrived in the United States.
In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over
the Saudis, between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive
director, University of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush
administration as a senior adviser to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice after
leaving the commission.
The staff included experienced investigators from the
FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA, as well as the congressional
staffer who was the principal author of the 28 pages.
Zelikow fired a staffer, who had
repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she
obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels.
Other staffers described
an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two
investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to
the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment
that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being
edited out of the report or was being pushed to tiny, barely readable footnotes
and endnotes.
The staff protests were mostly overruled.
The 9/11 commission did criticize
Saudi Arabia for its sponsorship of a fundamentalist branch of Islam embraced
by terrorists and for the Saudi royal family’s relationship with charity groups
that bankrolled al-Qaida before 9/11.
However, the commission’s final report was still widely
read as an exoneration, with a central finding by the commission that there was
“no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi
officials individually” provided financial assistance to Osama bin Laden’s
terrorist network.
The statement was hailed by the Saudi government as
effectively clearing Saudi officials of any tie to 9/11.
Last month, president Barack Obama returned from a tense state visit
to Saudi Arabia, disclosed the administration was nearing a decision
on whether to declassify some or all of the 28 pages, which have been held
under lock and key in a secure room beneath the Capitol since they were written
in 2002.
Just days after the president’s comments, however, his CIA director,
John Brennan, announced that he opposed the release of the congressional
report, saying the 28 pages contain inaccurate material that might lead to
unfair allegations that Saudi Arabia was tied to 9/11.
The congressional report was “based almost entirely on
raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI”, they said.
“The 28 pages,
therefore, are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are
generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules.”
If any part of the
congressional report is made public, they said, it should be redacted “to
protect the identities of anyone who has been ruled out by authorities as
having any connection to the 9/11 plot”.
Zelikow, the commission’s
executive director, told NBC News last month that the 28 pages “provide no
further answers about the 9/11 attacks that are not already included in the
9/11 commission report”.
Making the 28 pages public “will only make the red
herring glow redder”.
But Kean, Hamilton and Zelikow clearly
do not speak for a number of the other commissioners, who have repeatedly
suggested they are uncomfortable with the perception that the commission
exonerated Saudi Arabia and who have joined in calling for public release of
the 28 pages.
Lehman and another commissioner,
former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, filed affidavits last year in
support of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government by the families of
9/11 victims.
“Significant questions remain unanswered concerning possible
involvement of Saudi government institutions and actors,” Kerrey said.
Lehman
agreed: “Contrary to the argument advocated by the Kingdom, the 9/11 commission
did not exonerate Saudi Arabia of culpability for the events of Sept. 11, 2001
or the financing of al-Qaida.”
He said he was “deeply troubled” by the evidence
gathered about a hijackers’ support network in California.
In an interview last week,
congressman Roemer, the Democratic commissioner, suggested a compromise in
releasing the 28 pages.
He said that, unlike Kean and Hamilton, he was eager to
see the full congressional report declassified and made public, although the 28
pages should be released alongside a list of pertinent excerpts of the 9/11
commission’s final report.
“That would show what allegations were and were not
proven, so that innocent people are not unfairly maligned,” he said.
“It would
also show there are issues raised in the 28 pages about the Saudis that are
still unresolved to this day.”
No comments:
Post a Comment