On the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks upon the United States, events that forever changed American democracy, there are those within the U.S. government who continue to cover up who and what were actually behind these terrorist attacks.
Both the Obama and Bush administrations have stymied the public release of 28 key pages from the U.S. Congress’s “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.” The report was issued in December 2002. Since that time, the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, former Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida, has been joined by a bi-partisan group of senators and representatives in calling for the release of the 28 pages. When a portion of the report was released in 2003, the Bush administration insisted the 28 pages remain classified.
The issue has arisen as an issue in the 2016 presidential race with Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul calling for the 28 pages to be released while Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a former federal prosecutor who knows much more about 9/11 than he is willing to admit, has argued for the pages to remain classified. Christie has even called for Paul to be put on trial in a Joe McCarthy-like witch hunt if there is ever another terrorist attack on America. Also arguing against release is Republican Representative Peter King of New York who said he has read the 28 pages and believes they must remain classified. Joining King is Republican South Carolina Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Lindsey Graham who said releasing the pages would harm U.S. relations with its allies in the Middle East. Graham refused to name those so-called “allies.”
The FBI knows the identities of those “allies.” In addition to Saudi Arabia, they include Kuwait and Qatar. Kuwait became a significant base of operations for Osama bin Laden and his “Al Qaeda” support network. Kuwait was the headquarters for an Islamic “charity,” Lajnat al Dawa al Islamiyah, a group designated by the Treasury Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization. Lajnat gave financial support to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged “Al Qaeda’s” chief planner of the 9/11 attacks. Members of the Qatar royal family also harbored top Al Qaeda fugitives, including Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri. Kuwait and Qatar also host major U.S, military bases in the Gulf region.
It can be understood why Peter King would take such a position on the 28 pages. King was a longtime supporter of funding terrorist groups in Ireland, including the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the “Real IRA,” an even more violent group that carried out a deadly bombing of civilians in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in 1998. King’s reticence in releasing the 28 pages is understandable since they explain how the 9/11 terrorists were funded through an interwoven network of Saudi bank accounts and secret Muslim financiers, the same sort of network that King once used to help finance IRA terrorists in Ireland.
As for Lindsey Graham, he is a retired colonel in the Air Force Reserve’s Judge Advocate General Corps and he presumably has had access to information about the total collapse of the Air Force’s defense system on the east coast of the United States on 9/11. The principal job of military lawyers like Graham is to cover up incompetence or other malfeasance in high ranks within their respective services.
A decade ago, a list of organizations that were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and were on the National Security Agency’s watch list for suspicious money transfers and transactions relating to the 9/11 attacks was leaked. The 28-pages in the congressional report remain classified because the Central Intelligence Agency had assigned case officers and “NOCs”—non-official cover clandestine agents—to work with officials and employees of many of the organizations on the list. The CIA is among the agencies that is adamantly opposed to releasing the 28-pages and making them public because of its involvement with many of the businesses and groups prior to and after 9/11.
The following banks are on the list:
Al Baraka Investments and Development Corporation
Al Barakaat Exchange LLC
Al Rajhi Banking and Investment
Al Shamal Islamic Bank
Arab Bank
Bank al-Taqwa
Dar al Maal al Islami
Dubai Islamic Bank
Faisal Islamic Bank
National Commerce Bank
Shamil Islamic Bank
Tadamon Islamic Bank
The list also includes the following Islamic charities: Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc.
Benevolence International Foundation
International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO)
Muslim World League
Muwafaq Foundation
Rabita Trust for the Rehabilitation of Stranded Pakistanis
SAAR Foundation
Sanabel al Kheer, Inc.
Wafa Humanitarian Organization
World Assembly of Muslim Youth
The following Saudi officials are on the list:
Turki al Faisal al Saud (the former chief of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to the U.S. and U.K.)
Mohammed bin Faisal al Saud (chairman of the board of the King Faisal Foundation)
Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al Saud (late Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia).
Bandar bin Sultan bon Abdulaziz al Saud (the Saudi ambassador in Washington on 9/11)
Release of the 28 pages has also been stymied by certain proactive congressional members of the Israel Lobby. The reason for that can be explained by the presence on the list of suspicious elements that were involved in supplying airport concessions on 9/11. Many of the supplied concessions are located within the secure parts of airports, including Newark and Dulles International Airports, where two of the four hijacked planes had originated on 9/11. The security applied to airport concessionaires was managed by aviation security companies with links to Israel. As one official who read the 28 pages confided on deep background, the embarrassing links to Israel are found in the footnotes found within the 28 pages.
The American public has been conditioned to accept the findings of the 9/11 Commission at face value even though the two commission chairmen, former Republican Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey and former House of Representatives Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Lee Hamilton have publicly complained that important information was withheld by the Bush administration and that the commission was lied to by government officials about what transpired on 9/11. They have, along with commission member Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, for a new 9/11 Commission, one that will not be interfered with by government pressure and non-cooperation.
The Pentagon has even pressured Hollywood against producing any truthful films about 9/11.
The Pentagon censors clearly do not care for any film or documentary that questions the official story of the 9/11 attack. They quickly turned down a request by National Geographic for military footage on a documentary on Ali Muhammad, the American Central Intelligence Agency operative and U.S. Special Forces drill sergeant who also worked for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
In 2005, a National Geographic special on Al Qaeda, a prequel to a program called “Inside 9/11,” received no support to film the U.S. Army Land Information Warfare Agency (LIWA) in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and a recruiting station because LIWA no longer existed. LIWA was the home of the controversial Able Danger operation, which reportedly was keeping track of many of the 9/11 hijackers and their money movements and communications prior to the September 11, 2001 attack.
And, if the Pentagon’s presence in Hollywood is not overbearing enough, consider that the CIA also maintains an “Entertainment Industry Liaison” in Tinseltown. Its mission statement is to “give greater authenticity to scripts, stories, and other products in development. That can mean answering questions, debunking myths, or arranging visits to the CIA to meet the people who know intelligence—its past, present, and future.” It does not mean assisting movie production companies in portraying what actually occurred before, during, and after 9/11. That is because the official story is that 19 Arab hijackers armed only with box cutters managed to, in a few hours, defeat a command, control, communications, and intelligence system that cost the United States trillions of dollars to build. That is worthy fodder for any Hollywood fantasy movie. Unfortunately, the U.S. government continues to insist that the American people buy this “Alice in Wonderland” nonsensical story.
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
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