A multicity support network inside America funded by Saudi Arabian officials to aid the 9/11 hijackers was never “taken down” after the attacks, and until a secret report detailing the network is made public, America will remain “vulnerable” to another attack, the former US senator who headed the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 warns.
More than a decade ago, President George W. Bush mysteriously classified a 28-page section of the “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.” The documents remain secret under President Obama despite his promise to 9/11 families to release them.
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla), who co-chaired the joint inquiry, says releasing the 28-page chapter — which was “censored from word one to the last word” over the objection of he and Republican co-chair Sen. Richard Shelby — would ¬expose shocking details on the terrorism plot that killed nearly 3,000 people. Allegedly, they identify Saudi officials, agents and other contact men for the 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 says.
As a result, he fears the terror support network was never abandoned and remains intact today, ready to be used for an encore attack.
“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.
“That’s another reason why releasing these 28 pages is so important: If this was in existence in 2000 and 2001, what is it in 2014?”
Al Qaeda last week called on terrorists secreted inside America to carry out car-bomb attacks in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Alexandria, Va., and other cities.
The Saudi-funded mosques where the hijackers received help obtaining housing, IDs and other aid remain open for business, including the so-called “9/11 mosque” in Falls Church. Investigators say the Saudi Embassy-financed Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center continues to be a breeding ground for terrorists, yet the government never shut it down.
Far from it, the Virginia legislature recently passed a controversial resolution “commending” the mosque — which was run by Saudi-sponsored al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who ministered to some of the Pentagon-cell hijackers — “as an expression of the [state] General Assembly’s admiration” for the center.
A resolution of another kind is wending its way through Congress. Sponsored by Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and five other lawmakers, it calls on Obama to declassify the Saudi portion of the 2002 report.
Jones, Lynch and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) recently held a press conference with 9/11 families to step up pressure on the White House to release the secret Saudi section.
“There is this other layer to 9/11 that really hasn’t been exposed,” said Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom, was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. “All or most of [the funding] was coming from Saudi Arabia, and that needs to come out. That truth needs to be told. It should scare the hell out of all Americans that they were living here, amongst us for two years, doing this before they actually carried out 9/11.”
Some information already has leaked from the classified section, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the hijackers. Riyadh denies any role in 9/11.
Graham says the White House was uncooperative with the bipartisan 9/11 inquiry and withheld key information about Saudi officials. The administration also denied the inquiry access to key witnesses.
Graham said the lack of cooperation, along with the subsequent censoring of the findings of congressional investigators, “was transparently designed to give them [Saudi officials] cover.”
FBI agents and detectives with the Fairfax County Police Department assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington complained of political interference. They say they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy.
“All of the intelligence agencies failed to follow up on top Saudis. They all failed,” Graham noted.
“Those weren’t three or four independent decisions to act incompetently. They were directed to act incompetently.
“They were operating under ¬orders from the White House.”
Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.”