Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) recently warned that the terrorist network behind the 9/11 attacks may never have been dismantled and remains a threat to American national security until the White House releases the censured portion of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”
“There’s no evidence the network prior to 9/11 has been taken down,” Graham said. “And in terms of our national security, we would be foolish to assume it has been taken down and end up more vulnerable.”
When Congress issued the joint inquiry over a decade ago, the Bush administration excised an entire 28-page section of the document in the name of safeguarding national security. The classified chapter dealing with the specific sources of foreign support remains classified under the current administration despite Obama’s promise during his 2008 campaign to declassify the censured section of the report.
Co-chair of the Joint Inquiry, Graham has led a 12-year fight to declassify the restricted portion of the report. According to Graham, the 28-paged classified chapter reveals key information vital to American national security and allegedly identifies Saudi officials, agents and other contacts for the 9/11 hijackers.
“Saudi support cells were set up in a number of US cities, coast to coast -- including Paterson, NJ, Delray Beach, Fla., Sarasota, Fla., Falls Church, Va., Alexandria, Va., Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix -- but were never properly investigated,” Graham told the New York Post.
Graham worries that without evidence that the Saudi support cells were ever actually dismantled, America is vulnerable to another attack.
“That’s another reason why releasing these 28 pages is so important,” he told the paper, “If this was in existence in 2000 and 2001, what is it in 2014?”
At a press conference last month, Reps. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, Massachusetts Democrat Stephen Lynch and Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie urged the White House to release the secret information on behalf of the families of the 9/11 victims and the American people who “deserve answers” about the events surrounding the 9/11 attack.
“As I read it, and we all had our own experience, I had to stop every couple pages and just sort of absorb, and try to rearrange my understanding of history for the past 13 years and years leading up to that,” Massie said at the press conference. “It challenges you to rethink everything. And so, I think the whole country needs to go through that; it's going to be difficult and it could be embarrassing, but that is no reason to keep the truth from the American people.”
Graham provided a video message to the conference in order to affirm his support of House Resolution 428, the most recent bipartisan resolution in a long line of initiatives urging the White House to release the classified information.
Graham believes strongly in a network of actors behind 9/11, holding that America has no reason to believe that the terrorist network was abandoned after 9/11. In order to avoid more incidents like 9/11 in the future, Graham asserted that the historical record must be set straight through the release of the classified section of the report.
“What reason do we have to believe it is not in existence today, ready to be used for a future attack against the United States,” Graham asked. “Whatever reason there was for the censorship has long since passed.”
http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/saudi-terror-network-behind-911-still-active-senator-warns/3ac579785dc290537.html
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