By Robbyn Swan, FloridaBulldog.org
Nearly 62 years after the tragedy, Florida U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and her “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets” brought Hollywood to the Hill and made headlines about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Before the Task Force had even begun, Luna asserted there had been “two shooters” in Dallas. The Clearwater Republican then made herself the subject of on-line ridicule by suggesting she would call the late president’s doctors and members of the Warren Commission – all long dead – before the committee. In the end, the Task Force invited a celebrity, Oliver Stone, director of the controversial pro-conspiracy movie blockbuster “JFK,” to its first day of public hearings on the president’s assassination. It is behavior that has skeptics asking whether the Task Force is a genuine mechanism for transparency or just another element in the President Trump reign of bread and circuses.
The Task Force, which has a six-month term, was created in the wake of a Trump Executive Order aimed at declassifying records related to the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations. Under the chairmanship of Luna, a staunch Trump ally, its mandate includes not only the assassinations but UAPs (UFOs) and USOs (unidentified submersible objects), the Epstein client list, the origin of COVID-19, and 9/11.
“The federal government has been hiding information from Americans for decades,” Luna said in a press conference when she took the chair. “It is time to give Americans the answers they deserve.”
Kel McClanahan, whose firm National Security Counselors specializes in helping clients gain access to classified material and advocating for “intelligent reform” in security law cases, cautiously welcomed the idea of the Task Force. “If they were serious about this,” however, McClanahan said, “they wouldn’t put a 6-month expiration date on it. That’s barely enough time to even read the records.”
Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), suggests that the Task Force may prove to be little more than a “stunt.”
“I’m guessing,” she told Florida Bulldog, “it’s not going to look at anything that Trump hasn’t expressed an interest in seeing declassified for his own personal/political gain.”
Fulfilling a promise he made on the campaign trail, Trump ordered the release of thousands of pages of files allegedly relating to President Kennedy’s murder. (The late March releases inadvertently revealed the Social Security numbers of hundreds of former government staff, and left Kennedy assassination researchers divided over the importance of their contents.)
LUNA’S ‘QANON UNIVERSE’
In lumping the assassinations and 9/11 together with UFOs, “the Epstein files” and “Covid 19 origins,” moreover, the Task Force has shackled them in the minds of some commentators to what has been described as “the QAnon universe of irrational conspiracy theories.”
Given its track record thus far, how will the Task Force approach still classified information about the 9/11 attacks? They will, one suspects, heed the siren call of the “9/11 Truth movement”, whose members continue to assert that they have the evidence to prove that the three World Trade Center towers collapsed as the result of “controlled demolition.” The “Truthers” have trumpeted the creation of the Task Force as their “moment.’’
In its first weeks, the Task Force sent letters to heads of various agencies and departments of the Trump administration requesting to be briefed on what documents, if any, they had on the subjects of its inquiries. The agencies were told that the Task Force would follow up with “recommendations on declassification to ensure that all applicable orders and laws are being implemented.”
The chiefs were asked to reply no later than Feb. 18. It is not known how many agency chiefs complied. As far as the public record shows, the congressional team has not asked many relevant department or agency heads – Justice, FBI, NSA, FEMA, EPA – about material related to 9/11. Letters went to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Neither the Task Force nor Rep. Luna’s office responded to Florida Bulldog’s calls for this story.
In fact, Florida Bulldog has a special interest in the Task Force’s work on 9/11. In 2011, Anthony Summers, Florida Bulldog’s Dan Christensen and I broke the story of a Saudi family from Sarasota who had fled the U.S. in the weeks before the attack. An FBI document released later after the Bulldog sued under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) concluded that the family had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”
Florida Bulldog made a prolonged effort using FOIA to obtain the FBI’s files. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11, gave a sworn statement in support of the lawsuit. “I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the Sept. 11 attacks,” he said. Graham died in 2024.
The suit resulted in the release of hundreds of pages of records, including Special Agent Gregory Sheffield’s “many connections” memo in 2013. Another 80,000-plus pages the FBI said are in its files remain secret after a judge declined to order their release.
OPERATION ENCORE EMERGES
Then in 2015, the 9/11 Review Commission, tasked with conducting an independent review of the FBI’s performance in implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, reported that it had reviewed FBI records and found that allegations the Saudi family was connected to the 9/11 plot were “unsubstantiated.” The possible existence of a Florida-based support network for the hijackers remains a matter of significant public interest. The Task Force should make FBI files on the matter an early target for release.
A second FOIA lawsuit by Florida Bulldog sought numerous undisclosed records of the 9/11 Review Commission, including an unredacted copy of its final report. Hundreds of pages were obtained, most notably a heavily redacted FBI report from early October 2012 released in late 2016 that showed, for the first time, that the FBI secretly continued to investigate 9/11 for years after the 9/11 Commission shut down at the end of 2004. It stated “Redacted is an investigation into individuals known to have provided substantial assistance to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar during their time in California.” The investigation’s code name, Operation Encore, was made public later, as were thousands of pages of reports in response to a September 2021 executive order from President Biden. The released documents make clear, however, that numerous reports, photographs and videos compiled during Operation Encore remain hidden.
Florida Bulldog asked a varied group of experts on the attacks – independent researchers, a former member of the Joint Inquiry and of the 9/11 Commission, an expert in national security law, a retired FBI Counterterrorism agent, a lawyer for the 9/11 families and a World Trade Center survivor – to weigh in on what items they would like to see released.
If Luna’s Task Force is interested in being a medium for deliberating serious national security issues, rather than a circus, these documents would be a good place to start.
The panel should first turn its attention to Congress itself.
Many Americans will remember the long struggle that culminated in 2016 with the release of the “28 pages” – the chapter of the congressional Joint Inquiry Report into the events of Sept. 11 that examined possible connections between the Saudi government and the attacks. When the rest of the report of the Inquiry, the first official probe into Sept. 11, was released in 2003, President Bush had classified the chapter on national security grounds. Years of lobbying, to which Florida Bulldog was a party, finally led the Obama administration to approve its declassification, which was then done by a vote of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Substantial sections of the Joint Inquiry Report remain redacted, however, and the files of Inquiry staffers are closed to researchers. Under rules governing congressional files, neither is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Among the Joint Inquiry files, one former staff member told Florida Bulldog, would be the National Security Agency’s (NSA) “retrospective” of its pre-9/11 signals intelligence – including the fullest record of intercepts related to a key al Qaeda communications hub in Yemen.
In 1996, the NSA had identified the number as one that Osama bin Laden called regularly. The number became a priority target for the NSA, and its coverage of calls to and from it. In 2022, in an exclusive report, Florida Bulldog revealed the existence of previously unknown calls between the hub and a phone in California associated with a member of the 9/11 hijack team. The NSA had not shared them with the FBI before the attack. The Inquiry’s files would show whether it shared the existence of the calls with official investigations.
Getting the Inquiry’s files released would be knottier than it appears, experts say. In theory, the FPF’s Harper explained, Congress could establish a special declassification program for the records, but doing so would require help from the National Archives (which houses them). Such an effort characteristically originates from a Senate select committee, rather than in the House. It would, Harper says, require real political will.
525 PAGES OF TORTURE REPORT ARE SECRET
In 2002, the CIA began using a program of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” – including waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, religious and sexual humiliation, and enforced enemas – on a number of suspected al Qaeda prisoners. Years later, the abuses would be documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 6,800-page Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Programs (the “Torture Report”), of which only a 525-page section of key findings has ever been released.
Release of the rest of the report could add to public understanding of the interrogation of 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees. The use of torture in extracting confessions from the men has so tainted the case against them, that some may never be brought to trial.
The FPF’s Harper, who has described the Torture Report as “the most consequential congressional report ever compiled” has argued that releasing it “would not only help the public hold the government accountable for abhorrent human rights violations but would counter overwhelming evidence that the CIA has become too powerful for oversight.”
Getting the Torture Report released, though, is likely to prove even trickier than getting to additional material from the Joint Inquiry. Kel McClanahan’s firm, National Security Counselors, argued the last – losing – attempt to obtain the Report’s release. He suggested that President Trump could order an agency – for example the CIA – to declassify its copy of the report. Even then, he said, Congress might still fight its release.
President Biden’s Executive Order on documents related to 9/11 specifically called on federal agencies to declassify documents related to investigations of the putative role of Saudi royal or government officials in the attack. In response, the FBI released several thousand pages of documents, the CIA several hundred, the NSA none at all.
The Task Force claims that its mandate is to ensure that “all applicable orders and laws are being implemented”. The Task Force could show some mettle – and bipartisanship – with a forceful recommendation that the agencies fulfil Biden’s Executive Order.
Robert Haefele, an attorney representing 9/11 survivors and families, thinks the Task Force could and should review the documents produced in their long-running civil suit against Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, he says the Task Force “should prioritize pressing the agencies to dig deeper…” for records the litigation has confirmed exist, but which the FBI has not produced. Those records include phone analysis and financial records relating to Saudi government officials and clerics suspected of coordinating a support network for the hijackers in the U.S.
“The FBI,” Haefele says, “was required to review and declassify these records pursuant to Executive Order 14040, but failed to do so.”
WHY IS OMAR AL-BAYOUMI’S IMMIGRATION FILE SECRET?
Other agencies’ compliance with Biden’s Executive Order should also be examined. According to veteran FBI counterterrorism agent Ken Williams, the Immigration file of suspected Saudi agent Omar al-Bayoumi was classified secret by that department. “In my experience,” Williams told us, “the classification of an Immigration file is rare. Why was it classified? Did another U.S. agency (CIA, FBI) request it?”
Williams would also like to examine material related to the chain of custody of evidence British authorities collected in the U.K. when Bayoumi was detained there in September 2001. That evidence – which included a drawing of a plane and a formula that appeared to be a calculation of the rate of descent to a target – lay unexamined in an FBI warehouse until 2007. To whom or what agency, Williams wants to know, had British authorities turned over the note and other equally relevant Bayoumi evidence?
The CIA for its part continues to withhold in full the Saudi chapter of its own Inspector General’s Report on the Agency’s accountability for the attacks.
The files of the 9/11 Commission, long since handed over to the National Archives (NARA), are another trove of documents researchers would like to access. Although there is a process in place – called Mandatory Declassification Review – many documents remain closed. Requests have been made to declassify the Commission’s private interview with President Clinton, and members of the Bush National Security team. All are still pending. According to NARA staff, a declassification request related to an interview with Bush’s counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, has been in the queue “for a number of years.”
NARA also holds some 1,700 items of audiovisual material used by the Commission. One former 9/11 staffer described the tape and transcript of the “Air Threat Conference Call” convened that morning as “among the most important primary source documents of the day.” To date, only a heavily redacted copy of the transcript has been released. History would benefit, too, from the release of the cockpit voice recording of the final minutes of United Flight 93. If the agreement of Flight 93 families could be obtained, Florida Bulldog has been told, the tape’s release would resolve a long debate about whether or not passengers had succeeded in their brave attempt to breech the cockpit.
NARA, according to research by the National Security Archive, has been underbudgeted for three decades with significant backlogs for declassification requests across its departments. In February, moreover, President Trump abruptly fired head archivist Colleen Shogan, adding her duties on a temporary basis to the portfolio being handled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Since then, several senior staffers at the Archives have also quit or retired. NARA doesn’t have the authority to declassify other agency’s files, nor sufficient staff to meet even current demand for declassifications.
“The President, through an Executive Order, or Congress, through the budget process, could grant NARA more authority and more resources,” Lauren Harper of the FPF told us. “That would be the most impactful way to get historical records of all stripes declassified.” In the era of DOGE, a recommendation for more money and more staff seems destined to fall on deaf ears.
Rep. Luna’s Task Force is not a magic wand.
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