By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Five 9-11 widows said Tuesday they were “horrified” to watch President Obama say in a Monday television interview that he hasn’t read the secret 28 pages of a congressional investigation into 9-11 said to implicate Saudi Arabia in support for the hijackers.
“It is deeply disturbing for President Obama to state that he merely has a ‘sense’ of what’s in the 28 pages,” said Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Vaun Auken in a statement released Tuesday.
“How is it possible that the Commander In Chief of the United States of America has not yet bothered to read these critically important national security documents that directly speak about the murder of 3,000 people?”
The statement on behalf of group of 9/11 families called September 11 Advocates was issued on the eve of President Obama’s trip to Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with King Salman, who was crowned last year.
Lawyers for 9/11 victims and their families who want to sue Saudi Arabia have said in court papers that before he was king, Salman “actively directed” a Saudi charity whose funding was “especially important to al Qaeda acquiring the strike capabilities used to launch attacks in the U.S.” The charity was Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SHC), which closed in 2011.
Obama made his remarks after CBS’s Charlie Rose asked him if he’d read the now-notorious 28 pages of the report by Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“I have a sense of what’s in there. But this has been a process which we generally deal with through the intelligence community, and Jim Clapper, our director of national intelligence, has been going through to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States. And my understanding is that he’s about to complete that process,” the President said.
In fact, the review process for the 28 pages has been underway for nearly three years. In June 2013, Broward Bulldog Inc., which operates as Florida Bulldog, invoked Executive Order 13,526. President Obama’s 2009 order sets the process for classification by executive agencies and the conditions that require declassification.
Thomas Julin, an attorney in the Miami office of Hunton & Williams, represents the news organization and 9/11 authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan in the matter.
The FBI, which originally classified the 28 pages, and the Justice Department separately ignored the Bulldog’s requests for what’s called a Mandatory Declassification Review. The Bulldog appealed that inaction to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) in July 2014.
An appeal to declassify 28 pages
The appeal asserted that declassification would help the American people understand how the September 11 attacks were financed and how similar attacks might be avoided. It also noted that others who have read the 28 pages, including former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry, have said that declassification would advance, not harm, national interests.
ISCAP, whose members include the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is required by Obama’s executive order to hear and determine the appeal.
The FBI did not provide the 28 pages to ISCAP for review for more than a year, and ISCAP has not acted on the appeal since.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CAL) is among a number of current and former lawmakers who want the 28 pages declassified.
The widows’ statement also castigated the President for not supporting the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a bipartisan bill that would allow the victims of terrorism on U.S. soil to sue foreign governments responsible for those attacks. To date, attempts to sue the very-deep pocketed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been rebuffed by the courts due to sovereign immunity protections.
“This is not just about a bilateral U.S.-Saudi issue,” President Obama said. “This is a matter of how generally the United States approaches our interactions with other countries. If we open up the possibility that individuals and the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries.”
“Contrary to the President’s characterization of JASTA, JASTA will not open the door for American citizens to ‘routinely’ start suing other governments,” the widows wrote. “There was nothing routine about the 9/11 attacks.”
Their statement said enactment of JASTA would send a “strong message” that governments which “bankroll terrorists who kill Americans on our soil will be held accountable regardless of their wealth, importance or power.”
“Mass murder through terrorism should never be qualified, excused or acceptable under any circumstances. President Obama ought to know that,” said the statement.
“JASTA is not a verdict of guilt against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. JASTA merely allows us to bring (it) into a court of law where, if warranted by the evidence, they can and should be held accountable.”
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