Other
officials, including the executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, have
said the classified documents do not prove that the Saudi government knew about
or financed the 2001 terrorist attacks, and that making the material public
would serve no purpose.
Now,
unsubstantiated court testimony by Zacharias Moussaoui, a former al-Qaida
member serving life in federal prison, has renewed the push by those who want a
closer look into whether there was official Saudi involvement with al-Qaida and
the Sept. 11 hijackers. They say it should start with the release of 28 pages
relating to Saudi Arabia from a joint congressional inquiry into the attacks.
"We
owe the families a full accounting," said Rep. Stephen Lynch of
Massachusetts, a Democrat who has read the classified pages written in 2002.
They were left out of the public version of the report on the orders of
President George W. Bush, who said they could divulge intelligence sources and
methods. Officials on both sides of the debate acknowledge that protecting the
delicate U.S.-Saudi relationship also played a role.
Lynch
and Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., have sponsored a resolution that calls for
declassifying the records. The White House has asked intelligence agencies to
review the pages with an eye toward potential declassification, spokesman Ned
Price said, but there is no timetable.
The
controversy comes at a consequential moment in the relationship between the
U.S. and the kingdom.
Saudi
Arabia has a new king — pro-American like the late monarch — and the two wary
allies are working closely to confront the Islamic State, the turmoil in Yemen
and Iran's nuclear aspirations. At the same time, U.S. officials say they
continue to privately admonish Saudi Arabia over human rights abuses in the
kingdom, such as the recent flogging of a blogger, and its support of the
spread of religious extremism abroad.
Moussaoui,
who claimed during his terror conspiracy court case that he had planned to fly
a plane into the White House on Sept. 11, was deposed by lawyers in a civil
suit by some Sept. 11 families who are seeking damages from the Saudi
government and other defendants, including charities and banks. Saudi Arabia
vigorously disputes the allegations.
Moussaoui
testified at his trial that key members of the Saudi royal family continued to
fund al-Qaida in the late 1990s, even after the organization had declared war
on the House of Saud. He also described plotting with an employee of the Saudi
Embassy in Washington to shoot down Air Force One.
Lynch
said the classified 28 pages, which are drawn from intelligence collection and
FBI investigations, "are consistent" with Moussaoui's testimony.
"There
are specifics, there are transactions, there are names," Lynch said. Others
who have read the document say it's far from definitive.
Two
senior congressional aides described the case as weak. One noted that just
because Saudi citizens helped the mostly Saudi hijackers in the U.S. does not
mean they knew about the operation. Another said that the pages contain
inaccuracies that could compromise an important diplomatic relationship.
The
aides spoke on condition of anonymity to describe material that remains
classified. "If
you think it's thin, well then, why not release it?" Lynch said.
Rep.
Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence
Committee, said he supports the release because he believes the pages would
"demystify" the notion of a Saudi conspiracy.
"The
issues raised in those pages were investigated by the 9/11 commission and found
to be unsubstantiated," he said.
That
commission, which built on the work of the joint congressional inquiry with
access to FBI files and secret intelligence, did not exonerate Saudi Arabia.
But it did conclude in its 2004 report that there was no evidence that the
Saudi government funded al-Qaida during the planning of the attacks.
"It
does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported
al-Qaida before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al-Qaida
sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al-Qaida's fundraising activities,"
the report said. "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source
of al-Qaida funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as
an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the
organization."
Two
ardent dissenters from that conclusion have been former Democratic Sen. Bob
Graham of Florida, a leader of the congressional inquiry and longtime chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and John Lehman, a Sept. 11 commission
member and former Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan.
Graham
has said he sees "a direct line between some of the terrorists who carried
out the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia." He believes
that a Saudi government agent living in the United States, Omar al-Bayoumi,
provided assistance to two Sept. 11 hijackers in San Diego at the behest of
elements of the Saudi government.
The
New York lawsuit argues that Saudi rulers were playing a double game in the
years before the attacks, expelling Osama bin Laden and declaring opposition to
al-Qaida, while secretly funding it to assuage the kingdom's religious
conservatives.
Moussaoui,
in testimony from a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, told plaintiff
lawyers it was "an absolute lie" that Saudi Arabia severed its ties
with bin Laden and al-Qaida in 1994.
"This
is a complete misleading ... assumption of people who are not familiar with the
way the Saudi government is established" because the government has
"two heads of the snake," he said, according to a transcript.
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