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Unfinished Business From 9/11

Fourteen years after its completion, the full record of Congress’s investigation into the 9/11 attacks has not been published. Twenty-eight pages are still being withheld amid suspicions that what they contain could implicate the Saudi government and Saudi citizens in the terrorist strike.

President George W. Bush ordered the pages kept secret in 2002. In 2014, prodded by some of the 9/11 families, President Obama asked intelligence officials to work on declassifying the material. The process is still dragging on. The 28 pages should be released immediately. Americans still do not know exactly why 15 out of the 19 hijackers from Al Qaeda were Saudi citizens and whether that indicates efforts by influential Saudis, including in the powerful religious establishment, to support the plot. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a co-chairman of the 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, has long claimed there is evidence of complicity by institutions and people beyond the 19 terrorists.

The Saudi government has long denied any involvement and that view was largely supported by the 9/11 Commission, an independent bipartisan panel that conducted a separate inquiry in 2004 and found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials” funded Al Qaeda. Still, questions remain about the work of a number of Saudi-sponsored charities with financial links to Al Qaeda.

As Ben Rhodes, a White House official, said Monday, while it was not Saudi government policy to support Al Qaeda, “There were a number of very wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia who would contribute, sometimes directly, to extremist groups, sometimes to charities that … ended up being ways to launder money to these groups.”

Because those connections remain unexplained, it’s important that the full congressional inquiry report be released. The push for the 28 pages is part of a larger effort by some 9/11 families to sue members of the Saudi royal family, banks and charities and hold them responsible for any role, including terrorism financing, they may have had in the attacks. So far, such legal challenges have been thwarted because, critics say, federal courts since 2005 have misread congressional intent on the issue of immunity for foreign nations from private lawsuits. They say there was never any intent to provide a legal shield for foreign nations against liability for acts of terrorism committed in the United States.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, and others are sponsoring a bipartisan bill that would make it clear that immunity should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on American soil. The bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in January.

President Obama has said he may veto the measure because it could prompt other countries to retaliate with lawsuits against the American government, citizens and corporations. Citizens should have a right to legal redress, but Mr. Obama has a valid concern about the bill’s potential impact. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has similar reservations about the legislation, said on Tuesday that he is working with the bill sponsors to address those concerns.

The controversy comes at a time when Saudi-American relations have been badly shaken by disputes over Iran, Syria and other issues, as well as by American frustration with the Saudis’ longstanding embrace of Wahhabism, an extremist form of Islam that inspires Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Repairing troubled ties with Saudi Arabia, which cooperates closely with America on counterterrorism and security matters, requires that all the facts be known. The Saudis themselves have previously called for the release of the redacted pages. It’s past time to do that.

Summary:

assistant: It’s time to release the redacted pages from Congress’s 9/11 investigation, and to make clear what the Saudi role has been in supporting terrorism.