Secret 9/11 dossier said to implicate Saudi Arabia in attack

By RHYS BLAKELY

 Pressure is building on the White House to release a secret chapter of an official report said to link Saudi Arabia to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bob Graham, who was chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, at the time, says an inquiry that he led uncovered evidence that the Saudis were the “principal financier”.

However, a 28-page chapter of the final report, believed to point a damning finger at the Saudi hierarchy, was redacted by the president George W. Bush.

“The effect of withholding [the 28 redacted pages] has been to embolden Saudi Arabia to be a continuing source of financial and human terror resources,” Mr Graham told The Times.

The suppressed chapter holds the potential to reshape US policy in the Middle East, he believes. Now retired, Mr Graham is demanding that the suppressed pages be released — a campaign that has now won backing in the US Senate for the first time.

The former Florida senator and governor argues that by keeping the pages hidden, the White House has signalled that Saudi Arabia has “impunity — protected not only from sanctions, but even from disclosure”. He said that the secrecy had helped elements within Saudi Arabia to continue to propagate their extreme Wahhabi version of Islam, and to pour money and manpower into al-Qa’ia and “the initial phase of ISIS”.

Riyadh has vehemently denied playing any part in the attacks, but the 28 pages have become infamous since they were produced in 2002. The document is held in a secure room beneath the US Capitol, in a file titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters”.

The second President Bush ordered that the chapter be redacted, arguing that it would expose “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror”.

Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, has read the pages — under watch to make sure he didn’t take notes — and rejects the idea that national security is at stake. “I would say it this way: it’s about relationships, about relationships in the Middle East, and the Bush administration.”

Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, said of reading the chapter: “I had to stop every couple of pages ... to rearrange my understanding of history. It challenges you to rethink everything.”

Another person who read the redacted pages suggested that the contents would embarrass the Saudi royals and the family of George W Bush.

The pages are thought to deal, in part, with Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two Saudi Arabians who helped to hijack the American Airlines jet that was flown into the Pentagon as part of the attacks. While living in southern California, they were allegedly supported by Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen said to have been in contact with the Saudi embassy in Washington. The Saudi government has denied that he was a spy.

Hazmi and Mihdhar were in contact with Osama Basnan, another Saudi citizen, whose wife is said to have received money — ostensibly for medical treatment — from a Saudi princess.

A separate joint congressional inquiry — known as the 9/11 Commission — failed to find a link between Saudi Arabia and the attacks. Philip Zelikow, its director, toldThe New Yorker magazine last year that the 28 secret pages contained “an agglomeration of preliminary, unvetted reports”, which his staff were unable to stand up.

However, the effort to make the secret chapter public is gaining momentum. Rand Paul, the Republican Kentucky senator who is running for president, added his name to the cause this week and a bill to release the pages is being introduced in the US Senate for the first time. “The survivors, civilian heroes, and families of the victims of the terrorist attacks ... deserve to know the truth,” said Mr Paul, who played a key part in resisting the mass surveillance of phone records this week with his opposition to the Patriot Act.

Meanwhile, Mr Graham has resorted to unconventional measures to publicise his concerns. He penned a spy novel, The Keys to the Kingdom, which tells how a state department staffer “uncovers a shocking international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda”.