Justice

This New Information About Who Really Funded the 9/11 Hijackers Strengthens Some Big Suspicions

May 13th 2016

Nearly 15 years after 9/11, questions still linger about how the largest terrorist attack on American soil was plotted and executed.

9_11 WTCWally Gobetz - wikimedia.org

One of the questions is how great a role the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia played in the attacks, and whether official government investigations covered up that role.

Recently de-classified information is shedding new light on those questions.

According to The Guardian, these documents show that members of the federally appointed 9/11 Commission had suspicions about the role of Saudi officials in providing material support to the hijackers, but those suspicions never made it into the final report.

They even interviewed a Saudi diplomat who they believed led a spy network in California the year before the 9/11 attacks, according to The Guardian.

U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Eric J. TIlford after the 9/11 attacks in New York. Flickr/slagheap - flic.kr

Despite this information, The 9/11 Commission's final report let Saudi Arabia off the hook.

Many 9/11 family members, politicians, and advocates want to know why. For now, the prevailing belief is that the 9/11 Commission received pressure from inside the U.S government to intentionally avoid implicating Saudi Arabia in order to protect its relationship with the United States.

Earlier this month, CIA Director John Brennan said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the federal government couldn't release the classified information because the American public may get the wrong idea about Saudi Arabia. He implied that Americans were not capable of fully understanding the documents.

CIA Director John Brennan on Foreign Policy, Terrorism NBC News/Meet the Press - youtube.com

"I think some people may seize upon that uncorroborated, un-vetted information that was in there, that was basically just a collation of this information that came out of F.B.I. files, and to point to Saudi involvement, which I think would be very, very inaccurate," he said.

Former Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham wasn't having it.

Graham, who participated in a separate congressional investigation into 9/11, wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post that called this reasoning astonishing.

"With all due respect, that argument is an affront not only to the American public in general but also to all those who lost family members, loved ones and friends on that fateful September day in 2001. Americans are fully capable of reviewing the 28 pages and making up their own minds about their significance."

Bob GrahamHarrison Diamond / Wikimedia Commons - wikimedia.org

The "28 pages" Graham mentions refers to the 28 classified pages of the congressional investigation into 9/11, which many believe contain information about Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks.

Families of 9/11 victims want answers as well. Loria Van Auken's husband Kenneth worked in the Twin Towers and he was killed on 9/11. She said that the 28 pages should be released and that they hold important answers.

"If someone you loved was murdered and the person was just able to go away Scott free, would you be okay with that? I don't think anybody would," she told CBS.

There's more evidence out there regarding official Saudi ties to 9/11.

Recently,28pages.org — which advocates for uncovering documents related to 9/11 — found a newly declassified memo from the 9/11 Commission's investigation that listed the names of dozens of Saudis they suspected of involvement with the hijackers.

The Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks. Flickr/slagheap - flic.kr

The files showed that the commission interrogated witnesses and suspects in 2003 and 2004, who they believed were connected to hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar when they were living in Southern California. Both men were aboard the flights that crashed into the Pentagon.

RELATED: 8 Powerful Images from September 11

[Ed. note - The poll in this story has been updated]

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