Making good on a campaign promise, President Biden directed the Justice Department and other federal agencies on Friday to oversee the review and declassification of documents related to the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In an executive order, Mr. Biden instructed Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to publicly release the declassified documents over the next six months.
“When I ran for president, I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America,” Mr. Biden said in a statement released before the 20th anniversary of the attacks next week.
In 2019, William P. Barr, then the attorney general under President Donald J. Trump, declared in a statement to a federal court that documents related to the attacks should stay classified to protect national security. The move stunned the families.
As a candidate, Mr. Biden pledged last year to “err on the side of disclosure in cases where, as here, the events in question occurred two decades or longer ago.”
Some family members think that the documents could detail connections between the Saudi government and the hijackers who carried out the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission, which released its final report in 2004, found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda, which carried out the attacks. But that phrasing left some to speculate that there might be evidence of involvement by other, lower-ranking officials.
As noted, the 9/11 Commission language leaves open the possibility - or perhaps the likelihood - that Saudi government funded "charities" and lower level officials played a role in funding the hijackers and their murderous activities. Saudi Arabia's horrific human rights abuses make it clear that murdering innocents is of little concern to the government, inclunding the foul crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.
A column in the Washington Post further elaborates on why it is important to learn the truth about the true role of the Saudi government and the "charities" it funds to spread Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia is no friend of America. Here are column highlights:
By keeping — belatedly and under duress — a campaign promise, President Biden cauterized one wound from his miserable late summer. Commemorations of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will occur under the cloud of the Afghanistan war’s last days, but not marred by the anger of more than 2,000 family members of victims and first responders. They had said on Aug. 6 that Biden would be unwelcome at the ceremonies unless he released classified material pertinent to Saudi Arabia’s possible complicity with the 19 airplane hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudis. On Friday, he took a tentative step in the right direction.
After 9/11, lawyers for the families filed suits against Saudi charities and individuals but could not sue Saudi Arabia until Congress in 2016 amended (over President Barack Obama’s veto) the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. A federal court granted the lawyers limited discovery, and they subpoenaed FBI material concerning the role of Saudi officials who supported some 9/11 hijackers when they entered the United States. For years, the lawyers say, the FBI was dilatory. When the court ordered more FBI cooperation, the material the lawyers received was covered, at FBI insistence, by a protective order preventing them from telling their clients what they know about Saudi involvement, and requiring the lawyers to file almost all court submissions under seal. “We,” says one of the lawyers, “have never seen this level of secrecy placed on any lawsuit.”
After the families’ Aug. 6 statement, the White House and Justice Department promised to “re-review” the contested material for possible declassification. Because similar statements have been made by past administrations, the lawyers suspected Biden’s administration was stalling, hoping that after the 20th anniversary pressure for transparency would subside. But the families’ pressure persuaded an administration averse to more bad news.
The 9/11 Commission’s interestingly worded 2004 report found no evidence that the Saudi government “as an institution” or that “senior” Saudi officials “individually” funded the hijackers, but noted “the likelihood” that “charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda.” Since 2004, FBI investigations have found more.
Last week, CBS News reported about a notebook that belonged to a San Diego Saudi “student” on the Saudi payroll and a close associate of those two hijackers. CBS: “The notebook contained a handwritten drawing of a plane and mathematical equation that might be used to view a target and then calculate the rate of descent to the target.”
The families might succeed in prying information from a government unused to yielding. Despite pressure, the CIA’s official history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle remained secret until 55 years after the event. It is impossible to imagine that national security was jeopardized by at long last releasing the history. It is easy to imagine how a government prone to foreign policy pratfalls could have benefited from studying one.
In his 1998 book on secrecy, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) . . . . Moynihan said secrecy is regulation, but unlike most regulation, which “prescribes what the citizen may do,” secrecy “prescribes what the citizen may know.” Excessive secrecy — secrecy breeds its own excess — necessarily makes the citizenry and government unnecessarily ignorant.
Information tending to substantiate Americans’ suspicions that Saudi Arabia has more 9/11 blood on its hands than is already known will not subtract measurably from Americans’ regard for today’s Saudi regime, which the CIA says directed, from the highest levels, the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The regime’s audacity was perhaps encouraged by the U.S. government’s pattern of protecting the regime with secrecy.
Biden, given more than 2,000 reasons to do so, seems to have opted for transparency. Or — skepticism is always in order — at least a promise to revisit a campaign promise. So, if he follows through on his promise, we are going to learn, among other things, this: National security is not diminished by information that diminishes Saudi Arabia’s good name, which it has already forfeited.
America needs to stop funding its enemies. But for its oil, Saudi Arabia would be nothing - suggesting yet another reason America needs to end it energy dependence on fossil fuels.
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