President Obama followed through on his pledge to veto a bill that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. federal court.
Obama vetoed the bill late Friday afternoon, setting up a potential showdown with lawmakers. Congress may decide to try to override the veto of the popular bipartisan legislation but would need a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate in order to do so. None of his previous vetoes have been overridden.
The bill “threatens to reduce the effectiveness of our response to indications that a foreign government has taken steps outside our borders to provide support for terrorism, by taking matters out of the hands of national security and foreign policy professionals and placing them in the hands of private litigants and courts,” Obama said in a lengthy statement accompanying the veto.
The president also expressed “deep sympathy” for the families of the 9/11 attacks, all of whom he said have “suffered grievously.”
“I also have a deep appreciation of these families’ desire to pursue justice and am strongly committed to assisting them in their efforts,” he said.
As part of that effort, he said over the past eight years in office, he has directed his administration to “pursue relentlessly” al Qaeda, the terrorist group that planned the 9/11 attacks.
He also strongly backed and signed into law legislation that would ensure that first responders and other survivors of the attacks would be able to receive treatment for their injuries.
In addition, he directed the intelligence community to perform a declassification review of part of report of the congressional investigation into the attacks “so that the families of the 9/11 victims and broader public can better understand the information investigators gathered following that dark day of history.”
He said his administration remains “resolute” in its commitment to assist families in their pursuit of justice “and do whatever we can to prevent another attack in the United States.”
Enacting this bill into law, however, “would neither protect Americans from terrorist attacks nor improve the effectiveness of our response to such attacks,” he wrote.
Instead, he said it would violate a longstanding sovereign immunity policy with other countries, namely Saudi Arabia, and allow private litigation against them even though the U.S. has not designated them as state sponsors of terror.
The U.S. makes such sponsors of terrorism designations only after thorough reviews by national security, foreign policy and intelligence professionals.
The bill, he said, would be “detrimental to U.S. national interests more broadly, which is why I am returning it without my approval.”
Allowing private individuals to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts would invite other countries to sue U.S. servicemen and women and diplomats in their courts, potentially on trumped up charges, he argued.
The measure, he wrote, “threatens to undermine these longstanding principles that protect the United States, our forces, and our personnel.”
The measure, he concluded, however, “does not enhance the safety of Americans from terrorist attacks, and undermines core U.S. interests.”
A group made up of thousands of survivors and families of 9/11 victims said they were “outraged and dismayed” by Obama’s veto of the bill.
They called Obama’s rationale “unconvincing and supportable.”
“No matter how much the Saudi lobbying and propaganda machine may argue otherwise, [the bill] is a narrowly drawn statute that restores longstanding legal principles that have enjoyed bipartisan support for decades,” they said. “It will deter terrorism and hold accountable those nations that support and fund it.”
The group, known as the 9/11 Families & Survivors for Justice Against Terrorism, said it is deeply grateful for the “unanimous bipartisan support” for the measure in Congress and urged the Senate and the House to quickly attempt to override the veto.
The bill passed the House by voice vote Sept. 9 and the Senate by unanimous consent in May. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudi citizens, and in July a long-classified portion of a congressional investigation into the attacks showed that they may have received some help from Saudis with ties to the government.
The White House earlier Friday said it didn’t know if it had enough votes to prevent a congressional override because some lawmakers are voicing opposition to the popular measure in private that they aren’t expressing in public.
