What was in the 27 pages of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry suppressed by the White House?

Sen. Bob Graham, the former co-chair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has some highly disturbing and interesting information about Saudi ties to 9/11 hijackers. The information is based on the 27 pages from the Joint Inquiry report which the Bush administration tried to suppress, and is revealed in Graham's forthcoming book. This from a new review in the Miami Herald:

Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government.

Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training.

When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote.

The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report, Graham complained.

Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.'' . . .

Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and even common sense -- indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Why is Bush so anxious to protect the feelings of these criminals? What does Bush apologist Bill Kristol have to say about this? Hey, Committee on the Present Danger -- anybody home?

Update: In general, why are the neocons soft on al Qaeda? They want us to go after every other Islamist terror group but the one that struck the US on 9/11. The Bush administration has consistently tried to conflate the war in Iraq with the war on terror, contrary to evidence. The neocon-driven Committee on the Present Danger seems to be trying to get American public support for taking the war on terror to lots of enemies, except al Qaeda (or to try to insist that all those groups are interlinked, and therefore, indistinguishable). A senior Afghani official recently explained to me the Bush administration is doing nothing about the massive resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He told me the neocons are 'soft' on the Taliban, Pakistan, and by extension, al Qaeda itself, because Pakistan is a natural threat to Iran, and the neocons are hard on Iran.

Update II: Spencer Ackerman and John B. Judis have more on the suppressed pages of the report in an August 2003 New Republic piece, here:

Since the joint congressional committee investigating September 11 issued a censored version of its report on July 24, there's been considerable speculation about the 28 pages blanked out from the section entitled "Certain Sensitive National Security Matters." The section cites "specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers," which most commentators have interpreted to mean Saudi contributions to Al Qaeda-linked charities. But an official who has read the report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond that: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. "There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities," says this official. "They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government."

But, as Spencer notes in an email exchange on this issue, why did the independent 9/11 commission also refuse to acknowledge Saudi financial support for two of the hijackers? In a related issue, WaPo journalist Douglas Farah has also been questioning on his excellent blog why the 9/11 commission has to date refused to acknowledge that al Qaeda has also laundered its finances through West African blood diamonds.

Posted by Laura at September 5, 2004 02:44 PM