9/11 report: Secret 28 pages showing possible Saudi links 'to be released in days'

Victims' families and congressional lawmakers have been pushing for the documents' release

Feliks Garcia
New York
Thursday 14 July 2016 18:04 BST
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'9/11 would not have been possible without their support'
'9/11 would not have been possible without their support'

US Congress is expected to release 28 pages of classified information that contains information about alleged ties between the Saudi government and the September 11 terror attacks.

The 28 pages, which have been kept secret since the 2002 congressional investigation into the attacks that killed nearly 3,000, could be released as early as Friday, CNN reports.

The top secret documents are said to contain information about "specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers”.

President Barack Obama announced in April that the pages would be declassified during his administration. Nationall Intelligence director James Clapper had originally aimed for a mid-June release.

Former Democratic senator Bob Graham, who chaired the commission, first received word from a source close to the Obama administration for the summer release back in April.

“I hope that decision is to honour the American people and make it available,” Mr Graham told NBC. “The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?”

However, Mr Graham told CNN that administration officials stopped returning his calls when the mid-June date approached.

“I was told onn 12 April that the decision as to whether to release the pages would be made before 12 June,” he explained to CNN. “Well, we're now well beyond that date and no decision as to whether a decision is going to made has been released.”

But CNN reports that State Department officials have reviewed the 28 pages and plan to release them with "minimal redactions".

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According to Tim Roemer, who took part in both the bipartisan Congression inquiry and the 9/11 Commission, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report".

“There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with – all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating,” Mr Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, told the Associated Press.

Pressure mounted on the Obama administration to declassify the documents, as both Democratic and Republican members of Congress said they would pass legislation to compel the release of the documents if the President does not.

“If the Obama administration does not move forward then we need to pass [the legislation] to have the House Intelligence Committee publish the pages,” Massachusetts Rep Stephen Lynch said last week, according to CNN.

Saudi government officials reportedly want the documents to be released so they can have a chance to respond to the allegations.

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