Ernie
2015-09-18 19:05:24 UTC
Seven weeks after the end of the massive cleanup at Ground Zero
in lower Manhattan in 2002, a legal investigator for the
families of 9/11 victims requested a copy of an arrest warrant
issued by Interpol for fugitive al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Heres the reply she got from the Justice Departments Interpol-
U.S. National Central Bureau:
Release of information about a living person without that
persons consent generally constitutes an unwarranted invasion
of personal privacy in violation of the Freedom of Information
Act. You must submit an authorization [privacy waiver] signed by
Osama bin Laden, consenting to the USNCBs release to you of any
record that it may have pertaining to him.
The Justice Departments assertion of privacy rights for bin
Laden is a small rock in the wall of official secrecy that
continues to hide 9/11 documents held by the FBI, CIA and other
government entities on the 14th anniversary of the terrorist
attacks.
Lately, the public focus has been on the 28 blanked-out pages in
Congresss 2002 Joint Inquiry into the attacks regarding
foreign support for the hijackers read Saudi Arabia. The
pages, withheld by then-President George W. Bush and kept hidden
by President Barack Obama, have been the subject of recent
stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times and other
publications. On Capitol Hill, pending bills in the House and
Senate seek to open those pages to the public.
Yet hundreds, likely thousands, of significant records about
what the 9/11 Commission called a day of unprecedented shock
and suffering in the history of the United States remain off
limits in whole or significant part. The result: an incomplete
public understanding of events behind the attacks, and a denial
of evidence to 9/11 victims still seeking a measure of justice
in the courts.
PROTECTS INCOMPETENCE
Thousands of pages, photographs and tangible evidence have been
withheld, much of which from my personal knowledge has nothing
to do with keeping America safer but rather protects
incompetence or relations with perfidious foreign governments,
said former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired
Congresss Joint Inquiry into the attacks and helped write the
28 pages.
The United States has paid a high price in justice to injured
Americans, national security and confidence in government by
this secrecy. It is time to let our people know, Graham said.
Many hidden 9/11 records are years, even decades old. But some
like the classified files and memoranda of the FBIs secretive
9/11 Review Commission were produced in 2014 and 2015.
The Review Commission, charged with investigating the FBIs
performance and evaluating new information about the attacks,
went out of business in March after issuing a 127-page report.
The FBI has yet to release any other commission material sought
in a Freedom of Information request filed by FloridaBulldog.org
in April.
Perhaps the largest untapped source of information about events
leading up to 9/11 is the raw intelligence files about al-Qaida
and terrorist threats gathered by the eavesdropping National
Security Agency.
In his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the
9/11 Investigation, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon
said commission investigators neglected to examine that gold
mine of NSA 9/11 data until days before the commissions final
report was due.
Found in that limited time, and noted in the commissions
report, was strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit
of al-Qaida members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and
that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. We believe this
topic requires future investigation by the U.S. government.
Theres a massive amount of information, Shenon said in an
interview last week. Thats always been on the top of my list
of documents Id like to see.
Suppressed records are plentiful and easy to locate in the
reports of the Joint Inquiry and the footnotes of the follow-up
9/11 Commission. Aside from the notorious 28 pages, the Joint
Inquirys report contains numerous other blanked-out parts,
including six heavily censored pages regarding covert action
ordered against bin Laden by former President Bill Clinton.
The National Archives manages the 9/11 Commissions files and
maintains an online list of about 1,200 fact-finding interviews,
nearly 200 of which the public cannot access because they are
classified. Hundreds more released documents have redactions
ranging from minimal to heavy.
911datasets.org, a group that makes available raw information
obtained by 9/11 researchers, says the National Archives has
released about a third of the commissions files. Many records
within those files are nevertheless withheld citing national
security.
The Saudi role
The 9/11 Commission reported finding no evidence that the Saudi
government as an institution or senior Saudi officials
individually had funded al-Qaida. The official veil of secrecy
over its records, however, continues to obscure how it reached
that controversial conclusion.
Hidden from public view are commission interviews with White
House staff, FBI agents, CIA employees and officials with other
agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency, State
Department, Treasury Department and Federal Aviation
Administration. Also secret: interviews with government
officials from Great Britain, Canada, Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia.
One intriguing 2003 interview was with Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. who met with President George
W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House two
days after 15 of his countrymen helped carry out passenger
airline attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Bandars wife, Princess Haifa, made payments to a man the Joint
Inquiry identified as a Saudi extremist and a bin Laden
supporter. The man, Osama Bassnan, also apparently had contact
with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar, who
were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the
Pentagon.
Time magazine reported that from January 1999 to May 2002 the
princess made monthly payments of $2,000 to Bassnans wife, who
was said to suffer from a severe thyroid condition. The payments
totaled as much as $73,000, The New Yorker reported last year.
Key documents by the CIA and the Treasury Departments Office of
Foreign Assets Control relating to terrorist financing are also
under wraps.
Financiers
The wholesale redaction of any relevant detail is a problem
weve seen across the board when weve asked for documents that
address specific details of Saudi-based support for al-Qaida in
the pre-9/11 era, said Sean Carter, a victims attorney with
Philadelphias Cozen OConnor law firm. At the end of the day
this is immunizing those people from the consequences of their
actions.
The CIA took a different tack in its July 2013 response to a
FOIA request by another plaintiffs lawyer seeking intelligence
reports about Saudi Arabias al Rajhi Bank that were cited in a
Wall Street Journal story, U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank Favored by
Extremists.
The front-page article said CIA documents described al Rajhi
Bank, which describes itself as one of the worlds largest
Islamic banks, as a conduit for extremist finance that once
obtained a visa for a money courier working for Osama bin
Ladens second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri. The CIA replied
that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence or
nonexistence of the requested records.
CIA documents cited prominently in the 9/11 Commission Report
and requested by plaintiffs lawyers have been released in
recent years, often with heavy redactions and assertions that
the information was exempt by presidential directive or U.S. law.
In June, the CIA released a 10-year-old report by the agencys
inspector general regarding criticism leveled by the Joint
Inquiry. The 490-page report is riddled with redactions,
including nearly all of a 29-page section titled Issues
Relating to Saudi Arabia. A sentence that remains states that
the CIA found no reliable reporting confirming Saudi government
involvement with and financial support for terrorism prior to
9/11.
The FBI posts 72 documents about the 9/11 Commission on its
website. Many contain extensive redactions and none involve
allegations of Saudi financing for terrorists, the most
controversial aspect of the 9/11 case.
The FBIs sprawling 9/11 investigation, code-named PENTTBOMB,
was the largest in its history. More than half of its agents
worked the case, following more than a half-million
investigative leads, the FBI has said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/national/article34794816.html
in lower Manhattan in 2002, a legal investigator for the
families of 9/11 victims requested a copy of an arrest warrant
issued by Interpol for fugitive al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Heres the reply she got from the Justice Departments Interpol-
U.S. National Central Bureau:
Release of information about a living person without that
persons consent generally constitutes an unwarranted invasion
of personal privacy in violation of the Freedom of Information
Act. You must submit an authorization [privacy waiver] signed by
Osama bin Laden, consenting to the USNCBs release to you of any
record that it may have pertaining to him.
The Justice Departments assertion of privacy rights for bin
Laden is a small rock in the wall of official secrecy that
continues to hide 9/11 documents held by the FBI, CIA and other
government entities on the 14th anniversary of the terrorist
attacks.
Lately, the public focus has been on the 28 blanked-out pages in
Congresss 2002 Joint Inquiry into the attacks regarding
foreign support for the hijackers read Saudi Arabia. The
pages, withheld by then-President George W. Bush and kept hidden
by President Barack Obama, have been the subject of recent
stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times and other
publications. On Capitol Hill, pending bills in the House and
Senate seek to open those pages to the public.
Yet hundreds, likely thousands, of significant records about
what the 9/11 Commission called a day of unprecedented shock
and suffering in the history of the United States remain off
limits in whole or significant part. The result: an incomplete
public understanding of events behind the attacks, and a denial
of evidence to 9/11 victims still seeking a measure of justice
in the courts.
PROTECTS INCOMPETENCE
Thousands of pages, photographs and tangible evidence have been
withheld, much of which from my personal knowledge has nothing
to do with keeping America safer but rather protects
incompetence or relations with perfidious foreign governments,
said former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired
Congresss Joint Inquiry into the attacks and helped write the
28 pages.
The United States has paid a high price in justice to injured
Americans, national security and confidence in government by
this secrecy. It is time to let our people know, Graham said.
Many hidden 9/11 records are years, even decades old. But some
like the classified files and memoranda of the FBIs secretive
9/11 Review Commission were produced in 2014 and 2015.
The Review Commission, charged with investigating the FBIs
performance and evaluating new information about the attacks,
went out of business in March after issuing a 127-page report.
The FBI has yet to release any other commission material sought
in a Freedom of Information request filed by FloridaBulldog.org
in April.
Perhaps the largest untapped source of information about events
leading up to 9/11 is the raw intelligence files about al-Qaida
and terrorist threats gathered by the eavesdropping National
Security Agency.
In his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the
9/11 Investigation, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon
said commission investigators neglected to examine that gold
mine of NSA 9/11 data until days before the commissions final
report was due.
Found in that limited time, and noted in the commissions
report, was strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit
of al-Qaida members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and
that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. We believe this
topic requires future investigation by the U.S. government.
Theres a massive amount of information, Shenon said in an
interview last week. Thats always been on the top of my list
of documents Id like to see.
Suppressed records are plentiful and easy to locate in the
reports of the Joint Inquiry and the footnotes of the follow-up
9/11 Commission. Aside from the notorious 28 pages, the Joint
Inquirys report contains numerous other blanked-out parts,
including six heavily censored pages regarding covert action
ordered against bin Laden by former President Bill Clinton.
The National Archives manages the 9/11 Commissions files and
maintains an online list of about 1,200 fact-finding interviews,
nearly 200 of which the public cannot access because they are
classified. Hundreds more released documents have redactions
ranging from minimal to heavy.
911datasets.org, a group that makes available raw information
obtained by 9/11 researchers, says the National Archives has
released about a third of the commissions files. Many records
within those files are nevertheless withheld citing national
security.
The Saudi role
The 9/11 Commission reported finding no evidence that the Saudi
government as an institution or senior Saudi officials
individually had funded al-Qaida. The official veil of secrecy
over its records, however, continues to obscure how it reached
that controversial conclusion.
Hidden from public view are commission interviews with White
House staff, FBI agents, CIA employees and officials with other
agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency, State
Department, Treasury Department and Federal Aviation
Administration. Also secret: interviews with government
officials from Great Britain, Canada, Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia.
One intriguing 2003 interview was with Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. who met with President George
W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House two
days after 15 of his countrymen helped carry out passenger
airline attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Bandars wife, Princess Haifa, made payments to a man the Joint
Inquiry identified as a Saudi extremist and a bin Laden
supporter. The man, Osama Bassnan, also apparently had contact
with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar, who
were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the
Pentagon.
Time magazine reported that from January 1999 to May 2002 the
princess made monthly payments of $2,000 to Bassnans wife, who
was said to suffer from a severe thyroid condition. The payments
totaled as much as $73,000, The New Yorker reported last year.
Key documents by the CIA and the Treasury Departments Office of
Foreign Assets Control relating to terrorist financing are also
under wraps.
Financiers
The wholesale redaction of any relevant detail is a problem
weve seen across the board when weve asked for documents that
address specific details of Saudi-based support for al-Qaida in
the pre-9/11 era, said Sean Carter, a victims attorney with
Philadelphias Cozen OConnor law firm. At the end of the day
this is immunizing those people from the consequences of their
actions.
The CIA took a different tack in its July 2013 response to a
FOIA request by another plaintiffs lawyer seeking intelligence
reports about Saudi Arabias al Rajhi Bank that were cited in a
Wall Street Journal story, U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank Favored by
Extremists.
The front-page article said CIA documents described al Rajhi
Bank, which describes itself as one of the worlds largest
Islamic banks, as a conduit for extremist finance that once
obtained a visa for a money courier working for Osama bin
Ladens second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri. The CIA replied
that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence or
nonexistence of the requested records.
CIA documents cited prominently in the 9/11 Commission Report
and requested by plaintiffs lawyers have been released in
recent years, often with heavy redactions and assertions that
the information was exempt by presidential directive or U.S. law.
In June, the CIA released a 10-year-old report by the agencys
inspector general regarding criticism leveled by the Joint
Inquiry. The 490-page report is riddled with redactions,
including nearly all of a 29-page section titled Issues
Relating to Saudi Arabia. A sentence that remains states that
the CIA found no reliable reporting confirming Saudi government
involvement with and financial support for terrorism prior to
9/11.
The FBI posts 72 documents about the 9/11 Commission on its
website. Many contain extensive redactions and none involve
allegations of Saudi financing for terrorists, the most
controversial aspect of the 9/11 case.
The FBIs sprawling 9/11 investigation, code-named PENTTBOMB,
was the largest in its history. More than half of its agents
worked the case, following more than a half-million
investigative leads, the FBI has said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/national/article34794816.html