CNN : Obama vetoes 9/11 lawsuit bill

Obama vetoes 9/11 lawsuit bill

By Kevin Liptak | CNN White House Producer | September 23, 2016

- President Barack Obama vetoed legislation allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia
- The administration warns of unintended consequences
- Congress may override it next week

Washington (CNN)Barack Obama vetoed Friday a bill that would allow family members of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. The White House claimed it could expose US diplomats and servicemen to litigation in other countries.

Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress say they'll override Obama's veto next week.

Obama has now issued 12 vetoes. If successful, Congress' override would be the first of Obama's presidency.

Support for the "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act" ran high among lawmakers, who overwhelmingly passed the bill earlier this year after pressure from victims' groups. The bill would end foreign countries' immunity in the United States from lawsuits, allowing federal civil suits to go forward if the country is determined to have had a hand in a US terror attack.

In his veto message, Obama wrote he had "deep sympathy for the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, who have suffered grievously."

But he maintained the legislation would seriously hurt US national security interests and cause harm to important alliances, saying it "would neither protect Americans from terrorist attacks nor improve the effectiveness of our response to such attacks."

He warned that the law would hurt the effectiveness of the administration's action against terrorism by taking questions of foreign states' involvement in terrorism "out of the hands of national security and foreign policy professionals and placing them in the hands of private litigants and courts."

Obama also said the move would open Americans abroad, especially those serving in the military, to prosecutions by foreign countries, since this would remove the reciprocal agreements that now protect both sides from such lawsuits.

He also pointed to complaints that allied nations have made about the measure. This legislation, he said, "threatens to limit their cooperation on key national security issues, including counterterrorism initiatives, at a crucial time when we are trying to build coalitions, not create divisions."

Demonstrating the difficult political position the White House is in, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state, expressed her support for the legislation Friday.

"Clinton continues to support the efforts by Sen. (Chuck) Schumer and his colleagues in Congress to secure the ability of 9/11 families and other victims of terror to hold accountable those responsible," said Jesse Lehrich, a Clinton spokesman. "She would sign this legislation if it came to her desk."

Schumer called the veto "a disappointing decision that will be swiftly and soundly overturned in Congress."

Co-sponsor Sen. John Cornyn said, "I look forward to the opportunity for Congress to override the President's veto, provide these families with the chance to seek the justice they deserve and send a clear message that we will not tolerate those who finance terrorism in the United States."

White House lobbying effort

In recent days, some of the measure's supporters in Congress have expressed misgivings about the legislation, prompting a new effort by the administration to lobby against the bill.

The lobbying effort on Capitol Hill against the legislation has involved the administration but also representatives for the Saudi government, which denies any involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks. The alliance puts Obama in the unlikely position of defending the same position as the Kingdom, with which he's had longstanding disputes over counterterrorism strategies and human rights.

It also puts the President at odds with family members of 9/11 victims, who protested outside the White House this week and spoke alongside lawmakers from New York and Connecticut on Capitol Hill. They, along with other proponents of the bill, say the language is written narrowly to prevent the types of repercussions the administration predicts.

"The president's rationales to veto JASTA don't hold weight. They are 100% wrong," said Terry Strada, whose husband Tom Strada died in World Trade Center collapse. "For us, the 9/11 families and survivors, all we are asking for is an opportunity to have our case heard in a courtroom. Denying us justice is un-American."

Strada said the lobbying efforts from representatives of Saudi Arabia amounted to an intimidation effort from a country the US still relies on heavily in the fight against terror groups like ISIS.

"Neither the President nor Congress nor lobbyists for foreign kingdoms should be permitted to make us wait another day to pass JASTA," she said.

Veto override plans

Administration officials had been eying a Friday afternoon veto with the hopes of submitting it to lawmakers after Congress adjourned until November's election contests. But prolonged negotiations over a government funding bill and a package to combat Zika virus have delayed the recess, meaning lawmakers are still likely to be in Washington next week to cast an override vote.

"Our assumption is that the veto will be overridden," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan followed suit Wednesday, saying, "I do think the votes are there for the override." But the Wisconsin Republican also voiced his own doubts about the legislation, saying the implications for lawsuits against Americans worried him.

"I worry about legal matters," Ryan said. "I worry about trial lawyers trying to get rich off of this. And I do worry about the precedence. At the same time, these victims do need to have their day in court."

He was one of several prominent lawmakers who have expressed buyers' remorse for the proposed law. A pair of Republican senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have pushed for changes to make it more difficult for the families to pursue lawsuits but could also make it harder for the US to be sued for alleged wrongdoing.

Opponents of the bill gained support Wednesday both from the European Union, which issued its opposition in the form of a "demarche" statement to the US Department of State, and from a bipartisan group of former national security officials, who penned an open letter to Obama.

"The harm this legislation will cause the United States will be both dramatic and long-lasting," the letter read, citing arguments over weakening sovereign immunity. Its signatories included veterans of Republican and Democratic administrations, including Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to President George W. Bush; Michael Mukasey, a US attorney general under Bush; William Cohen, a secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton; and Richard Clarke, a national security aide to Bush and Clinton.

The letter also noted the law, if enacted, "will most certainly undermine our relationship with one of our most important allies, Saudi Arabia, and damage our relationship with the entire Middle East."

CNN's Dan Merica and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.

Stars and Stripes : Is terrorism justice legislation backed by 9/11 families dangerous to military?

Is terrorism justice legislation backed by 9/11 families dangerous to military?

By DIANNA CAHN | STARS AND STRIPES | September 23, 2016

WASHINGTON — Legislation that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in American courts was headed for a showdown Friday as President Barack Obama prepared to veto the bill and the families pressed for its full passage.

Caught in the middle: The question of whether the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, would imperil American diplomats and military servicemembers abroad.

The bill sailed unopposed through both houses of Congress after intense pressure from the families to pass the law on their behalf. If passed, it would remove sovereign immunity from foreign government officials, allowing U.S. citizens to sue them in U.S. courts for alleged acts of terrorism.

Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell off its U.S. assets should the bill become law and close allies France and Holland have warned they will pass reciprocal laws. Obama promised to veto the bill by Friday’s deadline, warning it could open the door to lawsuits against U.S. personnel in other countries.

The families say concerns of global repercussions are alarmist, but in recent days, a group of senior national security, defense and diplomatic officials and a separate group of former military generals, admirals and colonels wrote letters to legislators urging against the law’s passage.

Even as some lawmakers acknowledge newfound concerns, pressure to support the 9/11 families loomed large and Congress appeared primed to override the veto.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a co-sponsor of the bill, upset families when he voiced concerns. He told Stars and Stripes Thursday by email that he was disappointed that the choice had come down to supporting Saudi Arabia or supporting the families, when such serious considerations fell in the middle.

“ ‘Either or’ politics is not where I want to go, but it may wind up that if nobody’s trying to accommodate this problem, we’re just going to vote,” he said. “And if I have to vote, I’m going to vote to override the veto.”

Families of those killed and hurt in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have argued that the law is narrow and limited to acts of terrorism, not acts of war. Objectors warned that while U.S. law might differentiate between the two, it would not prevent less limited laws from being enacted in other countries. The White House also argued the classification of terrorism should remain an executive authority, not become a question for the courts.

“The safety and security of our diplomats, intelligence officers, military and other senior officials of the U.S. government and their ability to perform their duties without foreign influence or intervention would be seriously imperiled,” according to an open letter written this week by former Defense Secretary William Cohen, former acting CIA director Michael Morell and seven other former national security, intelligence and judicial leaders including advisers to Obama and President George W. Bush.

“The perpetrators of terrorism should and will continue to be pursued through our vast military, law enforcement and intelligence capabilities,” it said. But dismantling sovereign immunity “will put our government officials and military personnel at extreme risk and impede the ability of the community of nations to work together at a time when global cooperation in the war on terrorism is essential.”

On Tuesday, 9/11 families protested in front of the White House, calling on Obama to pass the act and making clear they saw his promise to veto as a direct affront.

“I am frustrated, angry and tired of the mistruths being carelessly spewed about this legislation,” Terry Strada, the chair of the 9/11 families and survivors group, said in a news conference near the Capitol after Tuesday’s protest.

Strada said JASTA was “carefully, narrowly crafted” over years by top lawmakers, and concerns about reciprocal laws were flawed. Diplomats are protected by the Vienna Conventions, she said, while the military is protected by wording in the legislation excluding acts of war.

“To equate what we do to protect ourselves from terrorism with what others do in support of terrorism completely misreads the bill,” Strada said. “Denying us justice is un-American.”

Lt. Col. Pat Testerman, a retired Air Force commander, said he strongly supported justice for the 9/11 families yet worries that the law would allow other countries to define things differently.

He could imagine a scenario in which a young Air Force lieutenant makes an error in an act of war – say, an erroneous target of a drone attack that kills civilians – and is tried in a foreign court for an act of terror, he said.

“What we define as acts of terrorism or acts of war is up to interpretation,” Testerman said. “And we open ourselves up to significant danger with this.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Sept. 12 that the law could “have an impact on our relationship with every country around the world in a way that has negative consequences for the United States, for our national security and for our men and women in uniform.”

Recent reports suggest some lawmakers might be wavering in their support for overriding the veto. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said this week that she was having second thoughts about the bill “because I think it launches a number of unforeseen happenings.”

On Friday, a group of retired military leaders signed a letter being passed around on Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to reconsider an override.

“Congress must take great care to ensure that soldiers must be able to do their jobs without threat of foreign influence or repercussion,” it said. “We must do all we can to protect them from possible legal action in faraway lands.”

Earnest said the president would continue to lobby lawmakers to let his veto stand. But he recognized that despite warnings about possible consequences, the 9/11 families held strong sway.

“There’s no denying the political potency of this issue,” he said. “But the president believes that it’s important to look out for our country and to look out for our servicemembers.”

cahn.dianna@stripes.com
Twitter: @DiannaCahn

VOR : Len Bracken Interview

The following is a transcript of an interview of Len Bracken by John Robles for Voice of Russia.

The interview was posted on the VOR website in three parts:

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

Part 4, January 6, 2014 : 'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas

I have fixed some of the spelling and punctuation errors. [WP]

~~~

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

States have used terrorism in various ways to advance their own interests for hundreds of years, including the use of terrorist attacks as a means to justify acts of war, crackdowns and Draconian laws such as the US Patriot Act. According to research on the matter by Len Bracken who granted an interview to the Voice of Russia, there are different types of state sponsored terrorist attacks which he has classified and that have been used by NATO, the US and other states in the past. Mr. Bracken is a specialist on the attacks of 9-11 and has done extensive research and interviewed witnesses including police who knew about Anthrax being stored by "Israeli Agents" in the US who were allowed to go free.

Robles: Hello, this is John Robles. I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken. He is the author of six books including The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations and an accredited journalist. This is part one.

Robles: Hello, sir.

Bracken: How do you do? Thank you for having me.

Robles: And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. It's a pleasure. My first question is regarding the motivations for your book The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror – can you give us a little bit of background: why you wrote it, what led you to write it?

Bracken: Well, when 9-11 happened I was in Riga, Latvia for an activist event to sort of protest consumerism. It took place throughout the entire city.

On the day of the event I knew better than to jump to any conclusions and I was very reluctant of course to say one way or the other who had done it. But after about six-months time and looking at some of the evidence and of course this was the same year that James Bamford published Body of Secrets that contained the information and reproductions of documents about Operation Northwoods.

For your listeners who may not know – Operation Northwoods was proposed in the early 60s prior to the beginning of the Vietnam War and Gulf of Tonkin just before that.

Robles: That was the one, I'm sorry, that was the one to blow up a done civilian aircraft and start a war with Cuba, right?

Bracken: Exactly, right.

Robles: Tell us about that plan. It was actually turned down for the extreme quality of it, but…

Bracken: Yes, sure. It was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer who proposed the plan to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

And so the idea was to have a covert attack upon America. So the idea that they would attack America and this would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

I guess that they had planned some bombings in Miami and Washington DC and blowing up an American ship in Cuban waters. That was what the plan had as sort of its stratagems. The kind of a tactics that would be used to provoke an attack.

I have a theory that I have developed, it's not just my theory but I've advanced it somewhat and we call this the "Indirect Attack". You know, this is always an attack pretending be someone else.

So the idea was that the attack would be staged and would make it look like the Cubans had done it and that would justify the attack.

We can see throughout history that this has taken place. You had Cuba in fact, you have the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 to get the United States into the Spanish American War, and then in 1915 you have the sinking of Lusitania to bring the United States into WWI, in 1939 you have the provocation by Hitler, he staged the raid on the Gleiwitz radio station to begin war with Poland. And of course Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Operation Northwoods was in 1962, then in 1964 was the Gulf of Tonkin.

So at the same time the assassinations, and of course were coming up, the anniversary of Kennedy assassination – these events were well-known and were accepted as having involvement of the States. These other things were also taking place and of course these two now are becoming increasingly more accepted.

Robles: You just mentioned Pearl Harbor as being a false-flag attack. Can you give us little background on why you are saying that was a false-flag?

Bracken: You can look into some of the books that have come out- the one that I drawn a great deal is called Others Unknown, it's by Stephen Jones.

I think that the evidence has come out that there was advanced knowledge on the part of the US military and the US Administration, at the time the Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And the idea was that they would send out the newer ships so that the older ships would be blown up and it would look like the Japanese had in fact attacked us without our knowledge when in fact there was advanced knowledge and the people on the ground in Hawaii were denied the information that was being held in Washington.

There are some documents that were missing from the archives that point to this, it's the implication.

One of the things about the book which is The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror in addition to some detailed synopsis of these events we also have a chronology.

Robles: I recently wrote an article regarding 9-11 etc. And I found a mention of your book, I was researching actually something that I had read years ago from the project for New American Century.

It was very interesting that when I started researching this, the project for New American Century website was up and within like 5 hours of my beginning digging there, this site went down and disappeared and it has not come back up.

Regarding 9/11 state terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and in particular the Project for New American Century – can you give us some background?

Bracken: Sure. I'm also the author of the first biography in any language on the French theoretician and filmmaker named Guy Debord.

He was part of what was called the Situationist International– the radical Marxist group that went from 1956 into the early 70s. And he stayed together with one of the members of the group whose name Gianfranco Sanguinetti and the two of them developed a theory of terrorism – sort of offensive-defensive theory of terrorism, saying there is offensive terrorism,, there is defensive terrorism, and it can be either direct or indirect.

And I have been working with that theory. I'm trying to develop and trying to advance it because, as I said, I wrote the biography on Debord and I also translated a book by Sanguinetti.

Sanguinetti's book is called On Terrorism and the State and this is where this theory was presented for the first time.

So with my book what we set out to do initially was to prove what we called the State Terror Thesis. And this is to recount many of the instances in which it's well known or fairly well-known and there is some reasonable evidence to support the idea that states use terror.

The big thing that influenced me in writing the book was the fact that in 2001 Jim Bamford published Body of Secrets about the NSA and other things which talked about the Operation Northwoods.

A more recent example was actually spoken of by Zbigniew Brzezinski in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in February 2007 in which he referenced a leaked document that said that George W. Bush had considered shooting down a UN plane in order to justify attacking Iraq.

So there is a lot of instances of this, with regard to Sanguinetti and his theory on Terrorism and the State. This involves the assassination in May of 1978 of Aldo Moro, who was the Christian Democratic Party leader, who was trying to reconcile some of the different political factions in his country.

And of course Sanguinetti's book was published in the next year 1979 and then again in 1980 they had the Bologna railway bombing which killed a lot of people. And a lot of the evidence has pointed back to, I hate to say this, but it pointed back to NATO and this Operation Gladio, it's called.

And there are several books published in Europe that have gone to great detail. One is by Philip Willan it's called Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, another one is called NATO's Secret Armies by Daniel Ganser. Of course, there are books in French and Italian on the subject.

In fact the European Parliament has tried to go back to NATO and say: "What is the chain of command on this? How could you have justified these attacks, pretending to be the Red Brigades in Italy and yet having infiltrated these groups?" And NATO refused to respond.

Robles: What was the purpose of Gladio?

Bracken: The original idea of Gladio was these were going to be stay-behind armies that after WWII the US and NATO would leave caches of weapons in countries such as Greece and Italy and Turkey and set up networks that could be used in the event of a Soviet invasion or Soviet takeover or Communist Party takeover and then invitation of the Soviets, any eventuality. That was the purported idea behind these "stay-behind" armies but in the end they ended up being engaged in provocations and according to Philip Willan, a lot of it goes back to the CIA base in Paris, the Hyperion Language School and that a lot of the people who were the Red Brigades who were doing the liaison, the sort of "fake" Red Brigades, they were doing the liaison with the CIA at the Hyperion Language School in Paris at that time. In any case, that is sort of briefly.

It turns out that the man who was most suspected of having pulled the trigger on Aldo Moro is free at this time. He did some prison time but he is actually a free man right now.

Robles: I see. Back to your book The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, what were the motivations behind your book?

Bracken: People knew about my work in developing a chronology for The Strategy of Tension, this is called The Strategy of Tension in Italy, the idea would be that they would create so much social tension that masses would want to have the state protect them and it would justify any kind of police actions, it would justify a crackdown on the left, for example.

I've done a lot of work on that, I worked out the chronology of the Situationist International in Italy and of The Strategy of Tension in Italy – it's in my book called The Arch Conspirator, it's a collection of essays, and in fact I associated it with an open letter to the citizens of Poland in which I warn them that if they were to join NATO, that they would potentially have some negative repercussions along these lines, of course it turned out to be different, they were used more as these kind of "rendition centers" if my understanding of that is correct.

Robles: The "Black Sites"?

Bracken: Yeah, exactly.

So the idea is that you could have Direct Defensive Terrorism. So this goes back to the terror of the French Revolution.

So that the terror was used by the revolutionary regime to defend itself. And this was done directly, they said: "Ok, we are going to go out, we are going to have a 'Scorched Earth Policy', we are going to just terrorize everyone and they will fall in line with our revolutionary dictate". That would be a Direct Defensive Attack.

And then you have a Direct Offensive Attack.

So these categories are a little but muddy -the example used by Sanguinetti would be the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. But of course we know that there were probably infiltrators there and that this is not so clean.

But just this whole idea that you could have the IRA, the PLO these groups would be involved in Direct Offensive Attacks against the established power, a minor group against the state.

So then you come to the category of the Indirect Defensive attack and this is the example that we could use from Italy where the Red Brigades are infiltrated, they are militarized and a Defensive Attack is staged. But it's done indirectly in order to justify the established power going on the offensive or for other reason.

So basically it allows a Draconian crackdown or it allows the Patriot Act for example in the case of the United States.

And then there is a forth category which is the Indirect Offensive Attack which has not been developed by Sanguinetti and I've done some unpublished work in that area.

But consider for example that maybe the British were caught in Iraq dressed as Muslims and carrying bombs and that kind of thing. So this would be an Indirect Offensive Attack, they are pretending to be someone else but they are doing it in a foreign country in an Offensive Attack.

Robles: There were reports out of Libya when all that was going on, there has been reports out of Syria as well, of officers being caught with British accents and Turkish accents and foreign languages being spoken.

Bracken: It could very well be this forth category –this Indirect Offensive Attack is where everything is gone since 9-11 which was an Indirect Defensive Attack although it was never really purely an Indirect Defensive attack because you probably had Israeli and Saudi involvement as well.

So it wasn't just the United States, there were other regimes.

Robles: Recently Prince Bandar, or "Bandar Bush", as he is commonly called, threatened President Putin and the Russian Federation with terrorist attacks during the Olympic Games if Russia didn't pull its support for Syria.

He also admitted that they control Chechen terrorist groups, they control AL Qaeda in Syria. What can you tell us about that - the Saudi connection to Syria, to 9-11, to the Bush family etc. if you could?

Bracken: With regard to 9-11 I can say that there was the report of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – this is joint inquiry into intelligence agency activities before and after the terrorist attacks in September 11th, 2001.

This was released in December 2002. And quite often when you get a report like this, that is conducted right after the fact it's going to be much more accurate than the 9-11 Commission Report, which we understand was more novelistic than historical.

So with regard to the Senate report they are missing I believe 24-28 pages and our understanding is that Senator Robert Graham has indicated in his novels and in other places, he sort of implied, that these missing pages relate to Saudi involvement in 9-11.

Of course there was a plane that ushered out, when all other flights were halted, the Saudis were escorted out of the country.

We understand that there was also a plane maybe even before the Saudi plane that ushered out Israeli nationals.

Robles: And the Bin Laden family…

Bracken: But the most damming evidence in my opinion goes to the Israelis, because, I have made the trip to Weehawken New Jersey where they had Urban Moving Systems and the only people arrested on the day of 9-11 were Israeli citizens, some of them tied to Mossad.

We know that with regard to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that the "Safe House" in New Jersey at that time was run by a Mossad Agent, probably working with the United States.

In 2001 Urban Moving Systems, they had the white vans, the vans that Dan Rather said: "Hey the police have stopped a white van on the George Washington Bridge" and it had thousands of pounds of explosives and of course the people were arrested, there was a massive "Spy Dragnet" but they were all allowed to go back to Israel.

And our understanding is that the person who was running the operation in Weehawken, at Urban Moving Systems is back in the United States and is actually living here now.

What the law enforcement officials that we spoke to, we went back to Weehawken years after the attack, they said that they were livid because they knew what was in there, there were bombs, there were detonators and there was even supposedly Anthrax there! Is what they told us.

This is John Robles. You are listening to an interview to Len Bracken. He is the author of several novels including The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror. That was Part 1 of an interview in progress, you can find the rest of this interview in our website at Voiceofrussia.com.

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

The events of 9-11-2001 are still cause for research and questioning and this will not go away until the truth is known. Among the thousands and thousands of inconsistencies in and around 9-11 are facts such as the US Government Anthrax that was used in the Anthrax terror attacks, the fact that two of the planes that were reportedly involved in 9-11 are still sighted today and the way the WTC buildings came down in obvious controlled demolitions. Len Bracken, who has written extensively on the matter spoke to the Voice of Russia on some of the more stunning questions that have never been answered.

Robles: Hello, this is John Robles, I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken, he is the author of six books including the "Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror", he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations, and an accredited journalist. This is part 2 of an interview in progress.

Bracken: When we went back to Weehawken years after attack, they said that they were livid because they knew what was in there, there were bombs, there were detonators and there was even supposedly anthrax there, is what they told us.

Robles: Anthrax?

Bracken: Yes, inside of the moving systems. Yes, the FBI supposedly cordoned off the area around Urban Moving Systems systems in Weehawken, NJ, came in with what are called moonsuits, these biological hazard suits because of the existence of anthrax there.

Robles: I have seen credible work done pointing to the fact that the anthrax was actually US Government grade military anthrax

Bracken: That's my understanding as well and I should mentioned that Andrews Smith was a contributor on the book and he did some valuable research on my book with regard to the anthrax chapter and of course, this whole idea that Mr. Ivins would have been culpable and I just don't believe it, you know, I think he was framed. I can say that based on some information that I have, people who knew him well and the evidence points to other people.

Robles: Who was that, who was framed? What was his role?

Bracken: There was the initial person of interest and then it came to a somewhat troubled man, forget his first name was, I believe it was "Bruce" Ivins, I think he committed suicide, one of those instances where it is very unlikely he would have done it and now he is gone and we can't really say one way or the other definitively

Robles: Back to the Saudi connection and I'm interested in Bandar-Bush and Al-Qaeda again, there was this rich Saudi family living in Florida where these pilots were training, (not to land, not to take off) but just to fly aircraft. Can you tell us what happened with them? There was a big scandal about them, they just disappeared and they left their homes, their cars and their televisions on and everything and they just disappeared.

Bracken: Yes, I talked to some people who knew them and other than what you have just said, I really don't know any details. It sounds like they were given a warning and they left, I don't have anything more for you on that.

I can tell you about my research into Mohammed Atta, also sort of an interesting fact about some of the drivers' licenses of the alleged hijackers, they were said to have lived at Pensacola Naval Air Station and when this came out in the news, one of the Florida Senators issued a press release and said he was going to get to the bottom of this and find out why was that hijackers would have driver's licenses with addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station and when I called his office, I was told later that they were not going to look into that.

Of course there is incredible evidence about Mohammed Atta and his being trained by the US Government. They say that he was in officer training school in an Air Force base in Alabama, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Now I called the base and I spoke with a press officer there and she said that there was a Mohammed Atta there but she couldn't tell me whether or not it was the Mohammed Atta in question and eyewitness accounts said that it very obviously was, numerous eyewitness accounts have come forth saying it was the Mohammed Atta.

So I hate to tell you this but I was actually in Riga Latvia, I live in Washington DC but I was in Riga, Latvia on the day of 9/11 so I had no ability to get there and check things out for myself but friends and family were nearby, they saw the plane go overhead, I subsequently went to the Sheraton Hotel with other researchers, with Ken Thomas from Steamshovel press, and with John Judge with the coalition of political assassinations, I am a Spanish speaker, I was able to talk with maids, talk with management there, and just based on friends and family and those people that were in the Sheraton hotel, which is right next to the flight path.

Now I just wanted to say that I put myself into category of 'we really don't know exactly what happened', and I don't think we will probably ever really know and I think we should be satisfied with the idea that we will never know.

I would say that it is possible that the plane was shut down or the plane was allowed to fly away and that a missile hit the Pentagon, I don't see any markings on the wall from the wings.

Robles: That is exactly what I am talking about that is evidence that's right in front of your eyes, it was in front of my eyes, it was in front of world's eyes. What does a Rolls Royce engine jet weigh? I mean the kind that are on a Boeing 767. They would have pulverized the windows, the walls, there would have been a massive hole, the lawn was untouched, that was clear, the second and third story windows were still intact, all the windows where the wings should have been were still intact, I mean, come on.

Bracken: There was some wreckage, so it would imply that something could have been shot, right before it hit and then maybe a second bomb hit the Pentagon.

I agree with you there is all this evidence that looks like it just wasn't a plane, but on the other hand I've looked at a compilation of roughly 90 pages of Times New Roman, single space print, paragraph after paragraph of eyewitnesses that said that they saw people in the planes, they could see their faces, they saw the plane going into Pentagon.

You know, whether it could have been some kind of optical illusion and the plane then actually flew away. At this point in our technological existence, anything is possible, I would say. So they could have seen something and then not have seen what they thought they saw.

Robles: I have heard that theory being put forward by some credible people that it was just a massive psychological operation. I mean people were shocked and they were immediately told what they saw and they believed what they were told.

Bracken: There was certainly a plane there. It does seem very difficult that the plane could have come down over that ridge.

I grew up around here and I used to skateboard under the underpass right there, between the Sheraton and the gas station, there is a big underpass and we used to skateboard those walls, I have been back over there, I looked at it.

Basically there is a highway called 395, you look at the flight path and the planes come right along straight, you know, they could have lined themselves with that and then pushed the nose down. I am told that that would have been very difficult and one eye-witness supposedly saw a pilot standing up in the cockpit with all the force of his body pushing down on the rudders to get it to dive.

Robles: Somebody said that they saw that from the ground?

Bracken: Yes, I've read it.

Robles: Have you ever tried to see a pilot in a 767 when it is just parked on the runway? I seriously doubt you will be able to see him standing up and you certainly wouldn't be able to see the flight yoke.

Bracken: Oh yeah, obviously not that. Well, all I'm just saying is that there are these accounts.

Robles: I've heard this and I've read about this and it's been documented: the plane that supposedly, that I would say the plane that never hit the Pentagon and a plane that never crashed or disappeared into a hole in field of Pennsylvania, their registration numbers are still current.

They haven't been annulled and those planes have been sighted several times since 9-11-2001. What can you tell us about the planes?

And another interesting fact was the pilot of the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon, he came from the Pentagon. He was a US air force pilot and he disappeared of course after 9/11? Have you heard any reports about those planes still being active?

Bracken: Yes, I've heard that. And of course you have these plane watchers everywhere around the world nowadays, so you would think that they would have covered their tracks a little bit better? But that does appear to be the case.

I can say that my friend and colleague Wayne Madsen did travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He interviewed numerous people there, including I believe the mayor of the town. The debris spreading for miles, and other evidence makes people believe that that plane was actually shot down. And that it didn't come down on the basis of some kind of passenger intervention.

That sounds more plausible as well. Why won't they tell that story if that's the true story I don't understand. There were also reports that that plane had landed in Ohio, I believe in Cleveland. I think it was channel 7 ABC news or something – they had a live report, and apparently this plane had landed and had been taken to a NASA hanger and everybody was evacuated.

I think there was 184 people I believe on it. And they disappeared within 20 minutes that the plane was evacuated and those people were never heard from again. Have you heard that?

Bracken: I have and I've heard some accounts of people and I've heard those accounts as well.. Those surfaced after my book published and I was not able to include those in my book.

Robles: What's your theory with that?

Bracken: I think that all of the scenarios..I think most of the scenarios have some degree of plausibility especially when you talk about the buildings up in New York, that's a big subject of controversy, the Pentagon as well, all of it. It's just sort of controversial.

And I wrote my book and I did a couple of interviews, after ten years I made a few more interviews, and I just don't want to get into a lot of the disputes about this. I don't have any definitive answers, I don't want to argue about it.

I wrote an article about Judy Wood just because I thought that this directed energy weapons should be at least examined and I got a lot of flak for it, trying to be objective and say 'Hey, at least hear the woman out'.

Anyway, any or all of the above is the way we should keep our minds open.

Robles: It's interesting you mentioned the directed energy weapons because I recently (listeners can go back and find an interview with ex-MI5 officer David Shayler) that's what he said they used at 9-11.

He said they were directed energy weapons, there was no way that the cement in those buildings would have been just been pulverized into dust.

OK, the planes. What happened? Maybe there was no crash and the plane was landed in Cleveland. Everyone was taken off, they were killed, those planes are still active apparently.

Back to WTC, the most obvious thing that we could talk about is Building 7.

How long would you say it would take to plan a controlled demolition of two of the highest skyscrapers in the world so they would fall directly into their own footprint, I mean as neatly and at free-fall speed as they did ?

Bracken: Yeah. It seems like it would have taken years, seems like they had something like this in mind.

I can remind your listeners about the events around the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in which an Egyptian Intelligence Agent working with the FBI was taken off the case a couple of weeks before the vans were parked there and exploded.

After the event he called his FBI handlers, the FBI handlers said that a decision was made to allow the attacks and he said 'Yeah, but we were gonna put something other than real explosives' and they said ' Yes, we are sorry, but that's what happened'.

Those interviews were printed verbatim in New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and Law School professors were standing on the steps of their law schools and saying 'Hey, this is a provocation'.

So, there is real strong evidence, that they'd done this kind of thing before.

Now of course we know that in weeks before the 9-11 there were these electricity shut downs, there were reports of people coming in with all these cables, the same thing happened around the time of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Robles: 24 hours before the event all the security and all the dogs were pulled off, remember that?

Bracken: Right. Yeah. So it's very damming for anybody who wants to support the establishment claims when you look at this.

One of the things that I found that was particularly interesting was the existence of this "art group" that lived in the World Trade Center Towers for several months and they had all these boxes, wires and it's still uncertain exactly what they did.

But what they were doing is that they actually took out a window and built a little balcony and they had a helicopter come by and photograph them. And that's one hell of an avant-garde art project, if you blow up the World Trade Center.

Personally I think it could have been directed energy, it could have been some small nukes, it could have been all of the above – many things could have been used.

Robles: There was that film-evidence and everybody saw it and it's there. And it's out there and it's still out there – the evidence of the molten steel – even 5 or 6 days after 9-11 it was Still Molten- they filmed blasts, like 25 blasts or something. I forgot, I sat one time and counted them. It was bam-bam-bam and then the building came down.

Bracken: Right and you can see some of these I-beams that are just sliced in perfect straight lines. It doesn't look like the kind of thing that would happen from some pancaking collapse. As improbable as even that is given the speed with which they came down.

Robles: And I think the most elementary thing is that any, even a two-year old child will know, say, you've got a pencil standing on its end, if you knock it on its side, it's gonna fall over, it's not gonna collapse into itself, right?

That is just the most obvious lie in the whole thing and it is so unbelievable –it's right in front of everybody's eyes, but everybody wants to believe what they were told, because they were in so much shock.

I mean, it is shocking to think and I'd like to comment on this – do you think is really possible that a government could kill 3,000 of its own citizens as a pretext to bring about a hyper-security state in condition of endless war

Bracken: Right. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security which probably will make the Gestapo look some kind of Utopian Paradise when it's all over

Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic?

Bracken: Yeah, I do think it's possible, I think that, you know, you had people like Samuel Huntington with his book 'The Clash of Civilizations', there seems to be have been this idea that they would start their "War on Terror" to pick up where the Cold War left off. And of course a lot of this all goes back to the thing that you brought up before which is the Project for a New American Century.

That was part 2 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

The events of 9-11-2001 continue to be the subject of intense debate and speculation due to the US Governments failure to provide the people of the world with a plausible or believable explanation namely: why two steel framed skyscrapers collapsed and were pulverized into dust as they imploded into their own footprints at free-fall speed from a lateral impact that they were designed to withstand, why building 7 also collapsed due to "office fires" and how a 767 disappeared into a two meter in diameter hole in the Pentagon without damaging the lawn or even second floor windows. Attacks of this nature have been classified as "an indirect defensive attack" by author Len Bracken and in this case saw the United States attacking itself. For those who think these are all "conspiracy theories" Len Bracken cites Machiavelli as one figure who actually documented such tactics man many years ago. He spoke to the Voice of Russia about these matters and more blaming 9-11 on a group originally calling itself the Safari Club.

Robles: Do you think is really possible that a government could kill 3,000 of its own citizens as a pretext to bring about a hyper-security state and a condition of endless war?

Bracken: Right. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, which probably will make the Gestapo look like some kind of Utopian Paradise when it's all over.

Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic?

Bracken: Yeah, I do think it's possible, I think that, you know, you had people like Samuel Huntington with his book 'The Clash of Civilizations', there seems to be have been this idea that they would start this "War on Terror" to pick up where the Cold War left off.

And of course a lot of this all goes back to the thing that you brought up before, which is this Project for a New American Century. And of course, Bamford came back in another book called "The Pretext for War" where goes into a great detail about how misleading it was for the Bush Administration to try to link 9-11 to Iraq, and of course, a lot of this goes back to the thing that you brought up before which is this Project for a New American Century, so many of the people that were a part of that, are tied to (How can I put it?) neoconservatives around Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago, who believe in the "noble lie" that can justify any kind of action.

Robles: Len, I was wondering if you could tell me anything about an article which appeared, I believe it was in Newsweek, somewhere around the 15th of September (2001), and they said that the Pentagon had been forewarned, somewhere in this article, which went into… tied into other warnings that were apparently received by other officials and, for example, Condoleezza Rice and the Mayor of San Francisco and some other officials who apparently did not fly that day. Do you know anything about that?

Bracken: Right, the article in the September, 15th issue of Newsweek talked about many of the hijackers receiving training at secure US military installations but it also mentioned that senior Pentagon officials were told not to fly, and to cancel all airplane travel reservations on the day before the 9-11 attacks.

This was in the article and when fellow researchers of mine spoke with one of the authors of the article, a very senior journalist, he denied that this information was actually in the article. And then my friend in turn said: "Hey, it's right here, you can see with your own eyes that this is what it says" and then he said "Well, then that's not true". So he denied the veracity of his own article.

Now with regard to some of the training, probably the most notorious example involves a 24th year air force veteran, by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler who was essentially the Dean of Students at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and he said that one of the hijackers and its, this Saeed Alghamdi (difficult name to pronounce) was actually trained at his institute and main others as well and that this Saeed Alghamdi was actually one of the three hijackers who took flight trainings at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

Then, of course, Colonel Butler was actually chastised and given some kind of disciplinary action on the basis of having made accusations, disciplinary measures were taken against him because he accused President Bush of knowing about the impending attacks and doing nothing.

Here is a quote from the letter that he wrote on May, 26th 2002 in the Monterey County Herald: "Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism."

Robles: Len, can you tell us a little bit of the background about the.. I believe, what was the official name of this school in Monterey? This was the school where they used to train spies. Can you give us some details on that?

Bracken: It was founded in 1946 with the first name being the Military Intelligence Service Language School, now it is called the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center in Monterey, most people refer to it as the Defense Language Institute.

Robles: How many of these terrorists were there and what were they studying? English?

Bracken: My understanding is that there was at least one, this Saeed Alghamdi, could have been more and they were studying English as a second language.

Robles: Why would they need it?

Bracken: You know, that's a good question. I guess that they probably spoke some English but not well enough to further their fight training or whatever else they were doing.

Robles: Do you think it is still possible that these people are still around today? Do you think any of the hijackers are still alive?

Bracken: It is entirely possible but certainly the idea that people they said who committed these attacks probably were not the ones who did it. Because many of these people have been found still alive, yet the government said that they died in the attacks.

Robles: So who did it then?

Bracken: I go back to what I said before; I think it was a massive operation, massive intelligence operation involving several governments.

Robles: Do you think it is possible they were drones?

Bracken: I take all of the above approach to the technical questions; I think we should consider everything. I don't think we are not going to get definitive answers on any of them. That's not very satisfying but I think that that's the reality.

I just go back to sort of my theory, I think it was an indirect defensive attack with United States attacking itself.

It's a very interesting thing about conspiracies, in his discourses Machiavelli talks about six types of conspiracies and he says that an attack against one's own country is actually very easy to do and so you have it from a figure no less than Machiavelli, saying that, you know, someone in a position of power decides to attack his own country, that he certainly would be able to do that with relative ease.

It might be interesting to include, you know, when people talk about conspiracy theories and try to dismiss this type of thinking. These things have been around for a long time and you have political analysts of the stature of Machiavelli presenting his classifications of types of conspiracies actually.

Robles: Back to the language school, I believe the person you mentioned wrote a letter to some newspaper.

Bracken: Right. It was in May 26, 2002 in Monterey County Herald, I have portion of it here at hands and he said: "Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism."

So that was written by a 24-year veteran of the air force, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler who was the Dean of Students at the Defense Language Institute who said that Saeed Alghamdi, and perhaps other hijackers were students at the Institute.

Robles: He "needed this war on terrorism", why do think that is?

Bracken: I think its feeling the vacuum created by the end of the Cold War, you had to have something to sustain the Defense Industrial Complex, which is sort of, to say it more accurately, it's probably a Military Intelligence Complex at this point, you might even call it a Military Intelligence Pharmaceutical Complex because a lot of drugs are being given to people that are involved in those operation, I believe.

Robles: Whether they are branch outing the pharmaceuticals or intelligence or military, I don't think it's important, it is the same shadow government, if you want to call them that.

Bracken: That was the title of book but unfortunately, I don't have the definitive list of those responsible, we can always keep looking but it's hard to really know exactly who is pulling the strings, who are the puppet masters?

Robles: Now, Len, your theory. What is your gut feeling, what is your theory who is behind this? What do you think really happened? In your gut, in your heart? Who do you think really did this?

Bracken: I think it's a group, a sort of amorphous group, called the Safari Club. And this Safari Club started back in the 70s when they had the Church Committee looking into activities of the CIA.

It comprises Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States primarily, could bring in other intelligence agencies, conceivably Pakistan in this event.

So the Safari Club came into being in order to prosecute just these kinds of things that would never be allowed by the parliaments and the Congress of the United States, the legislative bodies.

So that's my gut, that it was some kind of group, we'll call it the Safari Club, go back to the historical precedent, maybe it's no longer called that, probably it has another name, it is very easy to change names. But I think it was an alliance of intelligence forces in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States.

Robles: This is even beyond Black operations, isn't it? I don't even think that Black Operations Command would allow something like that to happen?

Bracken: I think it's in part a Black Opbut then it has a broader strategic… tactically a Black Op but strategically starting a massive war against terror.

Of course, you mentioned Al-Qaeda, and it was not long after the 2005, 7/7 bombings in London, that Robin Cook who was the former Foreign Secretary of Great Britain said that Al-Qaeda doesn't really exist, and that it is just a database for the CIA and then he passed away shortly after saying that.

Robles: I have heard that recently Al-Qaeda stands for "CIA Terrorist Database", isn't that correct?

Bracken: Well, that's what Robin Cook said. The former Foreign secretary of Great Britain said that.

Robles: Well, Al-Qaeda was begun, we know, in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden got his start in that war, Osama bin Laden had a CIA code name of Tim Osman when he toured US military installations and was privy to weapons demonstrations and things like that. Many people probably don't know that.

The man who came up with that information Orlin Grabbe, he is no longer with us, he was forced to live in South America or some place after publishing that information, he died a few years ago.

So Saudi controlling Al-Qaeda, the US funding controlling Al-Qaeda and now let's look at Syria, 426 children killed as a pretext for another aggressive military attack. What do you think about Syria?

Bracken: It's just a crime; it's like a slow motion crime. My heart goes out to everyone who is faced with this "foreign intervention", I wrote a general theory of Civil War, I would say that this is not a Civil war; this is most clearly a foreign intervention using the irregular troops to do it.

Robles: Non-state actors, right?

Bracken: Right.

Robles: President Assad, he said himself there are tens of thousands, he said, there are "tens of thousands" of imported foreign mercenary quote/unquote "jihadists", I don't know if you want to call them jihadists because, I mean, obviously they have economic interests and they are in their being paid, he said tens of thousands, it's almost beyond belief. And most people don't believe it, most people say, "Ah, it's some conspiracy theory, it can't happen", especially with what they are fed in the US media. The US media, even if they know this, many US reporters, they know this information but they can't talk about it because they will lose their jobs.

Bracken: There is an interesting connection… and we do depend on Russian media to a large extent to bring us some news, but there is an interesting tie-in between 9-11 and Syria and that is in the person of Thierry Meyssan who wrote the "Big Lie", which was probably the first book about 9-11 saying that it was an inside job and he has been doing some great reporting as well with his Voltaire Network about the events in Syria.

Robles: Len, let me ask you a question, a personal question, do you ever get afraid for your safety? Have you been threatened, have you been watched?

Bracken: Yeah, yeah. I get some warnings. And I try my best to walk a fine line, and we say what we can say, of course, here in the United States we have libel laws for the most part, I just addressed my accusations towards the collective statesmen, you know, you have to be very careful, well this is verbatim, my warning was that: "I had to be very careful with what I write", and I try to be very careful.

Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us?

Bracken: I can tell you that the same verbatim words were spoken to me twice by two different people in the course of one week when I was writing the book in the summer of 2002 and my apartment was opened, I would come home two days in a row and the front door would be open.

So I was given these very direct, but not too ominous messages, I would have to say that (How can I put it?), I was scared but, you know, I survived. I don't think I'm particularly brave, I'm not particularly brave, I would not be the first one to say that there is a lot of other people out there who have gone further with all of this and I think about somebody like a family member named Beverly Eckert who died in a plane crash herself, and she was one of those people who did not accept the money, and was trying to get to the bottom of what really happened.

That was part 3 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.


~~~

Part 4: 'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas

There are different categories of state sponsored terrorist attacks, but almost all of them are carried out with one goal in mind, namely as a pretext by a state for the beginning of a war. The events of 9-11 are no different and if one looks at all of the evidence that exists related to the events of 9-11, it is clear that statesmen were involved. Author, researcher and expert on state-sponsored terrorism, Len Bracken, who lost a relative who was also seeking the truth as to the events of 9-11, spoke to the Voice of Russia about the events of 9-11 and the different types of state sponsored terrorism.

Hello, this is John Robles, I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken, he is the author of six books including the "Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror", he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations and an accredited journalist. This is part 4 of an interview in progress.

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us?

Bracken: I can tell you that the same verbatim words were spoken to me twice by two different people in the course of one week when I was writing the book in the summer of 2002 and that my apartment was opened, I would come home two days in a row and the front door would be open.

So I was given these very direct, but not too ominous messages, I would have to say that (How can I put it?), I was scared, but you know, I survived.

I don't think I'm particularly brave, I'm not particularly brave, I would be the first one to say that. There are a lot of other people out there who have gone further with all of this and I think about somebody like a family member named Beverly Eckert who died in a plane crash herself, and she was one of the people who did not accept the money, and was trying to get to the bottom of what really happened.

For me I just tried to make an early case and sort of pulled back and only very rarely do I speak about this publicly and just I look to others who have done, probably better work than I have.

I don't want your readers, I mean excuse me, your listeners to get the wrong impression; that my book has the last word on 9-11 and that I know exactly what happened at World Trade Center. It deals a lot more with the diplomatic history and the circumstances that would have led up to
justify the attack.

Robles: Don't detract from yourself, everybody is doing a small part, everybody is covering certain angles. I mean, it is so big. I think it is impossible for someone to cover everything: the technical, chemical angle, the structural engineering angles, I mean, everything together, points to the fact that this was a very carefully staged and planned event. And it wasn't planned by some Islamic terrorists in a cave in Tora Bora.

Bracken: We certainly agree on that. There was a report in the summer of 2002 coming out of France, Le Figaro, that said Osama bin Laden was being treated in the American hospital in Dubai in the summer of 2001.

Robles: That is true, he was there. I think he was, if I'm correct, the day before and the day after he was still in the hospital and the CIA came in there, he was being operated on and there was like five CIA doctors or something, if I remember right.

Bracken: Yeah, and of course there was a denial from the CIA.

Robles: Do you remember, it lives only in memory I think now, there might be some references somewhere on the Internet I don’t know, do you remember Osama bin Laden's initial statement?

Bracken: There was a denial! It was issued in a paper in, I'll probably butcher the name, “Rawalpindi”.

Robles: Right, he said: “I had nothing to do with this! Al Qaeda had nothing to do with this”.

Bracken: Exactly and yet that would never be repeated. So; you would think that just for the sake of fair journalism, that the denial (and you can sort of dispute the denial or you could rebut the denial) but you would at least allow the other side to have their say. But instead what do we get? We get these doctored videos.

Robles: Right, he is wearing a US army coat, I think he has a wedding ring on his right hand or on his left hand, which Muslims wouldn't have, and in the videos I think he was left-handed and in the video he was right-handed, etc., etc., all kinds of things like that.

The main thing that I think that your message could be… one thing I’d really like you to talk about because you are one of the few people that I've heard that is willing to even broach this topic: “governments using terrorism and shadow governments using terrorism. Can you expand a little on the so called ”war on terror”?

Bracken: Historically it's demonstrably been the case and it's been used predominantly to bring about wars. I think that there was even an admission by the National Security Agency regarding the Gulf of Tonkin to justify the war with Vietnam, this was in 1964.

So you even have the government coming out and saying: 'Hey, at least in this one instance there was a provocation'.

Robles: What would you say to people who’d say: “Why do this, why to start a war on terror? I mean, that is not a reason to kill 3,000 people. To start as hyper security state and strip away civil rights; that is not a reason.” What would you say to people who say that?

Bracken: You know, it is a great question and it is a great question because I always say that the question “why?”, is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas and danger. We are never going to know why.

You know, you can tell me why you called me today and that might be the real reason why and there might be some other reason that you don't even know, some subconscious reason why.

The whole question “why?” is one of these things that I say: “Don't ask why”. There is The Doors' song “Don't Ask Why”. But I mean, of course, you can ask why, but you never really are going to know. That is not satisfying but I think that is the reality.

Robles: With 9-11 and all these events would you agree with the premise that when there is a crime you look who benefits from it and you will find the guilty party? Would you agree with that?

Bracken: I would say it would give probably the best indication.

You know, I was engaged in Marxist debates and we had this dialectical logic for many years, now I'm working in legal journalism, and I appreciate legal logic and it is the logical application. And what is the logical application of all of this evidence that we've talked about now and, of course, you and I both know there is much more. The logical implication is that statesmen were involved.

Robles: Who benefited from 426 children being cold bloodily murdered in Latakia Syria? Who would have benefited from that in your opinion?

Bracken: Well it’s the people who want to topple Assad, the people that have blood on their hands and they’re blood-thirsty killers and they’re aiming to kill Christians and Alawites and people that are different from them even if it's just in the slightest degree. Madmen…

Robles: Would you say that this would be the perfect surrogate for carrying out like these… let's call them black operations?

Bracken: I think that you are getting into this area, this forth category I mentioned, this indirect offensive attack. I'm working on that now, I'm trying to develop it, I see a lot of problems with it, because it requires that you have a lot of subcategories and it gets to the point where I really even ask myself – is this type of categorization really useful and beneficial in terms of the theory of terrorism? I'm working on it but I recognize the limitations, even of my own, research.

Robles: Indirect offensive attack would be exactly what?

Bracken: For example, the Brits dressed as Muslims that were found in Syria. They were pretending to be someone else and they are staging these attacks, making it look like Assad's troops had done it, for example, or people who are sympathetic to Assad, it is sort of my conception.

Robles: I see. I like the way you divide things up into different categories, it makes much more sense, it is more logical to my mind. Thanks a lot, take care, buddy.

That was part 4 of an interview in progress. You can find the rest of that interview at our website Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.

ABC : 9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia

9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia

By AARON KATERSKY and RUSSELL GOLDMAN | December 20, 2013

Families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks today celebrated a federal court's ruling that allows relatives of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.

Most of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia, and the complaint states that much of the funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists came from Saudi Arabia.

An attempt to Saudi Arabia in 2002 was blocked by a federal court ruling that said the kingdom had sovereign immunity. That ruling was reversed Thursday by a three-judge federal panel.

"I'm ecstatic.... For 12 years we've been fighting to expose the people who financed those bastards," said William Doyle, the father of Joseph Doyle, 25, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

"Christmas has come early to the 9/11 families. We're going to have our day in court," he told ABCNews.com.

The ruling struck down an earlier decision that found Saudi Arabia immune from lawsuits. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it's in the "interests of justice" to allow them to proceed.

Families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks and insurers who lost billions of dollars covering damaged businesses have alleged Saudi Arabia bankrolled al-Qaeda, knowing the money would be used for terrorism.

The lawsuit, filed a decade ago by the Philadelphia firm Cozen O'Connor, accuses the Saudi government and members of the royal family of serving on charities that financed al-Qaeda operations.

NY Daily News : 9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks

9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks

Relatives of people killed when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field can now resume lawsuit against the Arabian kingdom.

By Daniel Beekman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | December 19, 2013

Twelve years after Sept. 11, and eight years after a federal judge ruled Saudi Arabia has immunity from prosecution, families of 9/11 victims will get their day in court after all.

The relatives can revive their claims against the kingdom and a charity affiliated with the Saudi government, a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled Thursday.

“I’m ecstatic, because we have a lot of information and evidence,” William Doyle, whose 25-year-old son, Joseph, was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, told the Daily News.

The ruling overturned a 2005 Manhattan Federal Court judge’s decision that Saudi Arabia was immune from prosecution in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The lawsuit was brought by 9/11 families and insurers that covered losses suffered by building and business owners. The appellate panel pointed to a 2011 decision allowing similar claims against Afghanistan to move forward.

Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudi nationals who flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, when passengers revolted, a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 innocent people died in the attacks.

The families said Saudi Arabia and the government-affiliated charity knowingly provided Al Qaeda with funds and other support that helped the terrorist group carry out the attacks.

“These people are getting off scot-free. They didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, and to this day we still have terrorism running rampant. We have to hold accountable the people who finance terrorism,” the 66-year-old Doyle, a retired Staten Island stock trader now living in Sumter County, Fla., told The News.

In the appellate ruling, Judge Chester Straub wrote “the interests of justice” meant the claims should be allowed to move ahead.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge George Daniels will handle the case.

Doyle compared the role of Saudi Arabia to that of a mob boss hiring a hit man.

“Not only does the person who pulls the trigger go to jail, so does the person who financed him,” Doyle said. “What’s different about this situation?”

Michael Kellogg, a lawyer for Saudi Arabia, said the kingdom will seek further review of “this erroneous decision.”

The 2005 decision said Saudi Arabia was immune under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act from the claims, which were first filed in 2002.

“I think we’re finally seeing that light at the end of the tunnel,” Doyle said Thursday. “It's been 12 years that I’ve been fighting this battle. I will not give up this fight.”

Stephen Cozen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they are seeking damages that could reach tens of billions of dollars.

“This opinion is eminently correct and will give 9/11 victims their day in court,” Cozen said. “The parties will start over, and we are very, very satisfied that we will meet any defenses, both legal and factual, that are raised.”

With News Wire Services | dbeekman@nydailynews.com

Philly Inquirer : Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit

Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit

Chris Mondics, Inquirer Staff Writer | December 19, 2013

In a significant reversal, a federal appeals panel Thursday restored Saudi Arabia as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging that the desert kingdom financed and provided logistical support to members of al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, facilitating the terrorist group's emergence as a global threat.

The lawsuit, filed by Center City's Cozen O'Connor, has been wending its way through courts since it was filed in 2003. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled in 2008 that Saudi Arabia could not be sued under U.S. law. But in a highly unusual move, the court effectively acknowledged Thursday that its earlier decision was mistaken.

It restored not only Saudi Arabia, but also a government charity called the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which plaintiffs attorneys charge provided cash and logistical support to al-Qaeda units in the Balkans during the armed conflicts there in the 1990s.

"I think it is an eminently correct decision," Stephen Cozen of Cozen O'Connor said of the Second Circuit's opinion restoring Saudi Arabia as a defendant. "The kingdom and the Saudi High Commission deserved to be back in the case as defendants, and we are prepared to meet any of their legal and factual arguments with substantial legal and factual arguments of our own."

The decision marked the second advance in the last week for lawyers representing 9/11 victims, their families, and insurers that lost billions covering businesses and properties damaged or destroyed when two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Scores of people from the Philadelphia region lost their lives in the attacks.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on an appeal by Cozen, asking for the reinstatement of another group of defendants - dozens of individuals and financial institutions accused of funneling money to al-Qaeda before the attacks. The request suggests that the court views the matter as having some importance and increases the odds that it may agree to hear the appeal.

Cozen O'Connor and several other law firms sued the government of Saudi Arabia, various Islamist charities, and alleged terrorism financiers in 2003, charging that they provided financial support to al-Qaeda over 10 years before the 9/11 attacks. The firms alleged that Saudi Arabia provided tens of millions of dollars to charities that in turn bankrolled al-Qaeda units in the Balkans, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Senior U.S. government officials warned Saudis before the 9/11 attacks that government-funded charities were bankrolling terrorist units, but, they said, the Saudis failed to react.

A federal district judge in Manhattan dismissed the Saudi government and members of the royal family as defendants in 2005, saying the government was within its right to finance the charities and was not responsible for what the charities might have done with the money.

That was upheld in 2008 by the Second Circuit. But the court said Thursday that it had decided to reverse its decisions because it had allowed a related lawsuit to go forward on the same grounds cited in the suit against the Saudis.

"It means that the Second Circuit realized that it had made a mistake and did what courts are expected to do, which is fix it," said Jerry S. Goldman, a Philadelphia lawyer with the firm Anderson Kill, who represents the estate of John O'Neill, a former head of counterintelligence at the FBI.

O'Neill, who was raised in Atlantic City, sounded some of the earliest warnings about Osama bin Laden. He was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, where he had gone to work as head of security after leaving the FBI only a few weeks earlier.

The case has had significant political impact, and has affected U.S.-Saudi relations.

Victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives have complained bitterly about the U.S. government's failure to turn over more information about its investigations of Saudi support for al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.

They are pushing for legislation that would reduce protections afforded by U.S. law to foreign governments against such lawsuits. The Saudis, meanwhile, have complained that lawsuits have disrupted relations between the two governments.

NY Post : Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup

Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup

By Paul Sperry | December 15, 2013

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast:

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client.

The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the ­official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites.

Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled. (Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.)

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

Bill Doyle, who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks and heads the Coalition of 9/11 Families, calls the suppression of Saudi evidence a “coverup beyond belief.” Last week, he sent out an e-mail to relatives urging them to phone their representatives in Congress to support the resolution and read for themselves the censored 28 pages.

Astonishing as that sounds, few lawmakers in fact have bothered to read the classified section of arguably the most important investigation in US history.

Granted, it’s not easy to do. It took a monthlong letter-writing campaign by Jones and Lynch to convince the House intelligence panel to give them access to the material.

But it’s critical they take the time to read it and pressure the White House to let all Americans read it. This isn’t water under the bridge. The information is still relevant ­today. Pursuing leads further, getting to the bottom of the foreign support, could help head off another 9/11.

As the frustrated Joint Inquiry authors warned, in an overlooked addendum to their heavily redacted 2002 report, “State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more ­lethal attacks within the United States.”

Their findings must be released, even if they forever change US-Saudi relations. If an oil-rich foreign power was capable of orchestrating simultaneous bulls-eye hits on our centers of commerce and defense a dozen years ago, it may be able to pull off similarly devastating attacks today.

Members of Congress reluctant to read the full report ought to remember that the 9/11 assault missed its fourth target: them.

Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.”

Investors Business Daily : Time To Declassify 9/11 Probe's Secret Saudi Section

Time To Declassify 9/11 Probe's Secret Saudi Section

December 11, 2013

Foreign Affairs: Congress might soon vote on a proposed bipartisan resolution calling for release of a secret Saudi section of the congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry report. It's about time.

In 2002, President Bush censored 28 pages of the report dealing with foreign sponsorship of the grisly attacks on our nation. Some of the information has leaked out over the years, and it points back to Riyadh.

Now a couple of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion and walked away "absolutely shocked" are demanding the White House make it public. Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., suggest the conspiracy was much wider than al-Qaida. They say every American deserves to know the truth.

Their resolution, H.R. 428, urges President Obama to declassify the 28-page section that deals with "foreign" sources of support for the 9/11 hijackers.

"The contents of the redacted pages are necessary for a full public understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks upon the United States," it states.

"The executive branch's decision to maintain the classified status of these pages prevents the people of the United States from having access to information about the involvement of certain foreign governments in the terrorist attacks," the two-page resolution adds. It stresses that victims' families "deserve answers."

Indeed they do. Relatives have demanded the release of those redacted pages for years. We can't imagine the torture of living under that veil of secrecy. Or the anxiety of not knowing what really happened that day and who was really behind the murder of their loved ones.

The resolution sponsors insist that releasing the information won't violate national security, as the Bush administration claimed when it stepped in and erased it from a congressional report intended for public viewing.

Of course, that doesn't mean it won't hurt foreign relations. The fallout could be both diplomatically and economically damaging. There's also fear that openly punishing a Mideast ally could hurt efforts to box in a nuclear Iran. So the White House and State Department have to weigh these sensitive issues in making a decision.

But we believe it is worth the risks. The American public has a right to know if a foreign government aided the hijackers, whether that support was direct or indirect.

If a presumed ally knew of the plot to attack the very headquarters of the U.S. military, it certainly is no ally. And if there are no penalties for such a monumental betrayal, what message does that send to other nations that seek to do us harm?

IBT : 9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For Release

9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For Release

By Jamie Reno | December 9, 2013

Since terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, victims’ loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers – 15 of them Saudi nationals – and the Saudi Arabian government. Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection, and neither President George W. Bush nor President Obama has been forthcoming on this issue.

But earlier this year, Reps. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., were given access to the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) of 9/11 issued in late 2002, which have been thought to hold some answers about the Saudi connection to the attack.

"I was absolutely shocked by what I read," Jones told International Business Times. "What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly."

The public may soon also get to see these secret documents. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified by President George W. Bush. It has never been fully explained why the pages were blacked out, but President Bush stated in 2003 that releasing the pages would violate national security.

While neither Jones nor Lynch would say just what is in the document, some of the information has leaked out over the years. A multitude of sources tell IBTimes, and numerous press reports over the years in Newsweek, the New York Times, CBS News and other media confirm, that the 28 pages in fact clearly portray that the Saudi government had at the very least an indirect role in supporting the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attack. In addition, these classified pages clarify somewhat the links between the hijackers and at least one Saudi government worker living in San Diego.

Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who chaired the Joint Inquiry in 2002 and has been beating the drum for more disclosure about 9/11 since then, has never understood why the 28 pages were redacted. Graham told IBTimes that based on his involvement in the investigation and on the now-classified information in the document that his committee produced, he is convinced that “the Saudi government without question was supporting the hijackers who lived in San Diego…. You can't have 19 people living in the United States for, in some cases, almost two years, taking flight lessons and other preparations, without someone paying for it. But I think it goes much broader than that. The agencies from CIA and FBI have suppressed that information so American people don't have the facts."

Jones insists that releasing the 28 secret pages would not violate national security.

“It does not deal with national security per se; it is more about relationships,” he said. “The information is critical to our foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American people. If the 9/11 hijackers had outside help – particularly from one or more foreign governments – the press and the public have a right to know what our government has or has not done to bring justice to the perpetrators."

It took Jones six weeks and several letters to the House Intelligence Committee before the classified pages from the 9/11 report were made available to him. Jones was so stunned by what he saw that he approached Rep. Lynch, asking him to look at the 28 pages as well. He knew that Lynch would be astonished by the contents of the documents and perhaps would join in a bipartisan effort to declassify the papers.

"He came back to me about a week ago and told me that he, too, was very shocked by what he read,” Jones said. “I told him we need to join together and put in a resolution and get more members on both sides of the aisle involved and demand that the White House release this information to the public. The American people have a right to know this information."

A decade ago, 46 senators, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded in a letter to President Bush that he declassify the 28 pages.

The letter read, in part, "It has been widely reported in the press that the foreign sources referred to in this portion of the Joint Inquiry analysis reside primarily in Saudi Arabia. As a result, the decision to classify this information sends the wrong message to the American people about our nation's antiterror effort and makes it seem as if there will be no penalty for foreign abettors of the hijackers. Protecting the Saudi regime by eliminating any public penalty for the support given to terrorists from within its borders would be a mistake.... We respectfully urge you to declassify the 28-page section that deals with foreign sources of support for the 9/11 hijackers."

All of the senators who signed that letter but one, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), were Democrats.

Lynch, who won the Democratic primary for his congressional seat on that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001, told IBTimes that he and Jones are in the process of writing a “Dear Colleague” letter calling on all House members to read the 28 pages and join their effort.

"Once a member reads the 28 pages, I think whether they are Democrat or Republican they will reach the same conclusion that Walter and I reached, which is that Americans have the right to know this information," Lynch said. “These documents speak for themselves. We have a situation where an extensive investigation was conducted, but then the Bush [administration] decided for whatever purposes to excise 28 pages from the report. I'm not passing judgment. That was a different time. Maybe there were legitimate reasons to keep this classified. But that time has long passed.”

Most of the allegations of links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers revolve around two enigmatic Saudi men who lived in San Diego: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, both of whom have long since left the United States.

In early 2000, al-Bayoumi, who had previously worked for the Saudi government in civil aviation (a part of the Saudi defense department), invited two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to San Diego from Los Angeles. He told authorities he met the two men by chance when he sat next to them at a restaurant.

Newsweek reported in 2002 that al-Bayoumi’s invitation was extended on the same day that he visited the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles for a private meeting.

Al-Bayoumi arranged for the two future hijackers to live in an apartment and paid $1,500 to cover their first two months of rent. Al-Bayoumi was briefly interviewed in Britain but was never brought back to the United States for questioning.

As for Basnan, Newsweek reported that he received monthly checks for several years totaling as much as $73,000 from the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and his wife, Princess Haifa Faisal. Although the checks were sent to pay for thyroid surgery for Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, Dweikat signed many of the checks over to al-Bayoumi’s wife, Manal Bajadr. This money allegedly made its way into the hands of hijackers, according to the 9/11 report.

Despite all this, Basnan was ultimately allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, and Dweikat was deported to Jordan.

Sources and numerous press reports also suggest that the 28 pages include more information about Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI asset in San Diego who Newsweek reported was friends with al-Bayoumi and invited two of the San Diego-based hijackers to live in his house.

Shaikh was not allowed by the FBI or the Bush administration to testify before the 9/11 Commission or the JICI.

Graham notes that there was a significant 9/11 investigation in Sarasota, Fla., which also suggests a connection between the hijackers and the Saudi government that most Americans don’t know about.

The investigation, which occurred in 2002, focused on Saudi millionaire Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, whose upscale home was owned by Anoud al-Hijji’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the nephew of Saudi King Fahd.

The al-Hijji family reportedly moved out of their Sarasota house and left the country abruptly in the weeks before 9/11, leaving behind three luxury cars and personal belongings including clothing, furniture and fresh food. They also left the swimming-pool water circulating.

Numerous news reports in Florida have said that the gated community’s visitor logs and photos of license tags showed that vehicles driven by several of the future 9/11 hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home.

Graham said that like the 28 pages in the 9/11 inquiry, the Sarasota case is being “covered up” by U.S. intelligence. Graham has been fighting to get the FBI to release the details of this investigation with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation. But so far the bureau has stalled and stonewalled, he said.

Lynch said he didn’t know how the Obama administration would respond to the congressional resolution urging declassification, if it passes the House and Senate.

“But if we raise the issue, and get enough members to read it, we think we can get the current administration to revisit this issue. I am very optimistic,” he said. “I’ve talked to some of my Democratic members already, and there has been receptivity there. They have agreed to look at it.”

Obama administration officials declined to comment on the congressional resolution or on the classification of these documents.

The 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism (JASTA), an activist group comprised of the attack victims, has been calling for the declassification of the 28 pages for more than a decade. The group plans to contact Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, this week to urge her to introduce a similar resolution in the Senate.

Sharon Premoli, a 9/11 survivor who was on the North Tower's 80th floor when the plane hit and is a JASTA member, says Jones and Lynch “share our objectives of seeking the truth behind 9/11 and bringing to justice those who bankrolled the attacks.”

Premoli said it was a “miracle” that she survived 9/11. “I found myself buried under dust and on top of a dead body,” she said. “It makes me angry that I still don’t know what happened or who was supporting these hijackers. The veil of secrecy must be lifted for the families, the survivors and for the American people.