The House Intelligence Committee voted to reveal the pages, which are part of a larger 2002 investigation of the 9/11 attacks by the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Their classification has proven controversial because of allegations that they contain information linking Saudi Arabia to the hijackers.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for their release, but the Obama administration has said it would do so only after careful review. Administration officials have also downplayed the significance of the information, noting the 9/11 commission created by Congress thoroughly examined the issue and did not find evidence of a link between Saudi officials and the hijackers who staged the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
WASHINGTON
— Congress on Friday made public a long-classified document detailing
possible connections between the Saudi government and the Sept. 11
terrorist plot.
The
28-page document is a wide-ranging catalog of alleged links between
Saudi officials and Qaeda operatives. It details contacts that Saudi
operatives in Southern California had with the hijackers, and describes
the discovery of a telephone number in a Qaeda operative’s phone book
that was traced to a corporation managing a Colorado home of Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The document,
a section of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks,
had been kept secret out of concern that it might fray diplomatic
relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Its release marks
the end of a yearslong fight by lawmakers and families of the Sept. 11
victims to make public any evidence that the kingdom might have played a
role in the attacks.
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