The formerly classified section of the congressional 9/11 report that was declassified on Friday criticized the U.S. intelligence community for not having any intelligence on Saudi Arabia at all, which made it difficult to follow up on leads that some of the 9/11 hijackers might have had help from Saudi Arabia.
The first page of the document said some of the hijackers may have received support from people who “may be connected to the Saudi Government.” It said FBI sources and others said at least two of the people who may have provided help were “alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers.”
The report stressed that these allegations couldn’t be confirmed. “In their testimony, neither CIA nor FBI witnesses were able to identify definitively the extent of Saudi support for terrorist activity globally or within the United States and the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature,” the report said.
But the report also said there was no intelligence about Saudi Arabia to consider, since the U.S. wasn’t collecting it.
“The FBI and CIA have informed the Joint Inquiry that, since the September 11 attacks, they are treating the Saudi issue seriously, but both still have only a limited understanding of the Saudi Government’s ties to terrorist elements,” it said.
The 2002 document said this lack of information was “only recently” being addressed by a joint working group between the CIA and FBI.
“In the view of the Joint Inquiry, this gap in U.S. intelligence coverage is unacceptable, given the magnitude and immediacy of the potential risk to U.S. national security,” it said. “The Intelligence Community needs to address this area of concern as aggressively and quickly as possible.”
Lawmakers and the White House said the now unclassified pages don’t offer any new information that might point to a connection with Saudi Arabia, even though that conclusion is only possible because the intelligence didn’t seem to be available at the time.
“[I]t’s important to note that this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. “Many of the Intelligence Community’s findings were included in the 9/11 Commission report as well as in a newly declassified executive summary of a CIA-FBI joint assessment that will soon be released by the Director of National Intelligence.”
“I know that the release of these pages will not end debate over the issue, but it will quiet rumors over their contents – as is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty,” added Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The White House also dismissed the importance of the release by saying nothing in the pages change the conclusion of who was behind the attack, and who wasn’t. He said they contain “no evidence” of Saudi Arabia’s involvement.
“It will confirm what we’ve been saying for quite some time,” Earnest said.
