[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 112 (Friday, July 25, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H7774-H7775]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1900
            TIME FOR AN END TO THE ADMINISTRATION'S SECRECY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the special congressional panel 
looking into the September 11 attacks issued its report. It said the 
intelligence community could have done a much better job in protecting 
the American people. That truly is an understatement.
  But what stands out is the fact that the Bush administration has 
taken secrecy to a new unacceptable level. The administration insists 
on keeping secret 28 pages of that report. It is widely believed that 
these 28 pages deal with the possible involvement of foreign 
governments in the 9/11 tragedy and specifically Saudi Arabia.
  Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration clearly exaggerated the 
immediate threat to the United States posed by the regime of Saddam 
Hussein in order to justify the war in Iraq, and, indeed, I have 
supported the calls for an independent commission to get to the bottom 
of that deception.
  The administration's credibility has been greatly damaged by the 
revelations about the manipulated statements in the President's State 
of the Union address. Now we have 28 pages of a report of a vitally 
important study that are being kept away from the American people.
  Do the American people not deserve to know the truth, whole truth, 
the whole story about 9/11? Do the families of 9/11 not deserve to 
know? What is the Bush administration now hiding about Saudi Arabia's 
possible involvement? How can the Bush administration justify keeping 
this secret from the American people?
  In an editorial entitled ``Deception and Denial,'' the London-based 
Financial Times this morning says the following about the Bush 
administration:
  ``The scale of the Bush administration's official obstruction is 
clear.'' And the article goes on to say `` `The Bush administration has 
done everything they can do to make sure that's not the focus,' said 
William Wechsler, a former White House official who coauthored a recent 
report critical of the Saudi failure to cut off financing for terrorist 
troops.'' The Bush administration wants `` `to talk about tactical 
breakdown, but they do not want to talk about the elephant in the 
room,' '' i.e., specifically Saudi Arabia. According to the Financial 
Times, ``the tantalizing glimpses of the Saudi role that survived the 
censor's pencil are by far the report's most potentially explosive 
aspects.''
  We know there were meetings between some of the hijackers and Omar 
al-Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen. What does that mean in the context of 9/
11? There are reports that al-Bayoumi supplied at least some of the 
hijackers with cash. Is that true? Unless the Bush administration drops 
its insistence on secrecy, the American people and families of the 
victims of 9/11 might never know the truth.
  The Bush administration says it cannot tell the American people the 
whole truth because of national security concerns. One should ask, is 
it national security that the Bush administration cares about or is it 
political security? Or could it be access to Saudi oil? As the 
Financial Times said this morning, ``It is hard to avoid suspicion that 
some of the coyness may have political origins.'' The decision to keep 
this information secret adds ``a new layer of haze over its 
credibility,'' says the Financial Times.
  It is time for the Bush administration to tell the families and to 
tell the American people what it knows about the possible involvement 
of foreign governments or foreign nationals in the events of September 
11, and no one should be exempt from that scrutiny. No country, no 
person. It is time for an end to the Bush administration's secrecy.

               [From the Financial Times, July 25, 2003]

       Report Raises New Questions on Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks

               (By Marianne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden)

       Washington.--The September 11 hijackers received foreign-
     government support while they were in the US plotting the 
     attacks on New York and Washington, the leader of a 
     congressional inquiry charged.
       The conclusion, which is strongly hinted at in the 
     declassified parts of the inquiry's 900-page report released 
     yesterday, will raise new questions about the role of Saudi 
     Arabia in particular. The Bush administration insisted on 
     deleting a 28-page section of the report that focused on the 
     link to foreign governments.
       Senator Bob Graham, the former Democratic intelligence 
     committee chairman who led the investigation, said the 
     hijackers ``received, during most of this time [in the US], 
     significant assistance from a foreign government which 
     further facilitated their ability to be so lethal''. He would 
     not identify the government.
       But he charged the Bush administration with refusing to 
     release the information ``to protect the country or countries 
     . . . that were providing direct assistance to some of the 
     hijackers''.
       The report also contains new evidence that US intelligence 
     agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew far 
     more about some of the hijackers activities than has been 
     revealed.
       While the administration has insisted that the plot could 
     not have been unraveled from the information available, a 
     congressional official said: ``There was no smoking gun in 
     the sense of all the details and the specifics in one piece 
     of intelligence . . . But that is not the same as saying that 
     this attack could not have been prevented.''
       Despite the deletions demanded by the administration, which 
     held up the report's release for nearly seven months, it 
     contains new evidence that indicates the Saudis may

[[Page H7775]]

     have had ties to supporters of the September 11 hijackers.
       It focuses on the activities of Omar al-Bayoumi, who some 
     in the FBI believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent, though 
     the Saudi government has denied the allegation.
       Mr. Bayoumi played a vital role in establishing Nawaf al-
     Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the hijackers, when they 
     arrived in the U.S. before the attacks. U.S. intelligence 
     agencies knew as early as 1999 that the two were linked with 
     al-Qaeda and that they had attended a CIA-monitored high-
     level meeting of the terror network's operatives in Malaysia 
     in January 2000.
       Mr. Bayoumi met the pair in Los Angeles shortly after he 
     was observed entering and leaving a meeting at the Saudi 
     consulate.
       Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., 
     said yesterday that the country was facing ``false 
     accusations . . . made by some for political purposes'' 
     despite its widespread co-operation with the U.S. in the war 
     on terrorism. ``It is disappointing that despite everything 
     we are doing, outrageous charges continue.''
       The report also revealed another serious U.S. intelligence 
     failure before the attacks, which represented ``perhaps the 
     intelligence community's best chance to unravel the September 
     11 plot''. The FBI had recruited an informant in San Diego 
     who met repeatedly with Mr. Hazmi and Mr. Mihdhar. However, 
     the FBI did not act on his information because the CIA had 
     not told the FBI of the pair's suspected links to al-Qaeda. 
     The FBI agent handling the informant said ``we would have 
     done everything'' had the CIA revealed what it knew.

               [From the Financial Times, July 25, 2003]

    Deception and Denial (Part Two)--The White House's Intelligence 
                          Problems Get Bigger

       It is often the case with lengthy inquiries into government 
     failures that what gets left out of the final report is more 
     interesting than what goes in it. Politicians are not unduly 
     burdened by a capacity for self-criticism and if they can 
     hide behind spurious claims of national security to avoid 
     providing potentially damning evidence to hungry 
     investigators, you can generally guarantee that they will.
       The publication yesterday of the results of the 
     congressional investigation into the performance of the US 
     intelligence services in the run-up to the September 11 2001 
     terrorist attacks is a case in point.
       We knew already that the White House had been most 
     unhelpful in its dealings with the congressional 
     investigators, failing to make available critical material 
     such as presidential briefings on the scale of the al-Qaeda 
     threat. Now, in the form of dozens of blank pages in the 900-
     page volume, the scale of official obstruction becomes clear.
       Though the report still reaches some valid conclusions 
     about the failures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and 
     the Central Intelligence Agency in acting on what they knew 
     about the hijackers, the overall effect of the 
     administration's behaviour is to produce more questions. Most 
     disturbing is the White House's unwillingness to disclose 
     important new information on Saudi Arabia's role in the 
     terrorist plot.
       The long list of errors by the FBI and the CIA remains the 
     central finding. The fact that officials had opportunities to 
     track the movements of at least two of the hijackers in the 
     months before the attacks represents the largest single 
     failing and highlights flaws in intelligence co-ordination 
     that still need to be put right. In addition the lack of 
     reliable intelligence overseas prevented either the Clinton 
     or the Bush administration from taking preemptive action 
     against al-Qaeda that might have scuppered the plot.
       But the tantalising glimpses of the Saudi role that 
     survived the censor's pencil are by far the report's most 
     potentially explosive aspects. Meetings between some of the 
     hijackers and Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen, are well 
     documented, as are indications that he supplied them with 
     cash. But instead of detailed investigation of Mr. al-Bayoumi 
     and his alleged links to the Saudi government, there are only 
     blank spaces. The administration says it could not agree to 
     publication of this and other material for national security 
     reasons. That may be true. But it is hard to avoid suspicion 
     that some of the coyness may have political origins. The Bush 
     administration is already under fire for its dubious 
     disclosures about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Now the 
     White House has added a new layer of haze over its 
     credibility.
       In the end the congressional report is not so much an 
     indictment of the intelligence agencies, though it clearly 
     highlights their faults. It is an indictment of the needless 
     obfuscation surrounding too much of this administration's 
     national security policy.

               [From the Financial Times, July 25, 2002]

          September 11 Investigation Undermines Bush's Claims

               (By Edward Alden and Marianne Brun-Rovet)

       For the past 18 months the administration of President 
     George W. Bush has clung firmly to the argument that, while 
     there were certainly intelligence failings, the September 11, 
     2001 attacks could not have been prevented.
       The release yesterday of the declassified final report of 
     the congressional investigation will make that argument much 
     harder to sustain, and could ignite fresh controversy for an 
     administration already under scrutiny for manipulating 
     intelligence information before the war on Iraq.
       The report contains few entirely new revelations about the 
     missed opportunities to unravel the plot of the 19 hijackers. 
     But the detailed evidence of how much the U.S. knew of their 
     movements before the attacks belies the assertion made to the 
     investigators last year by Robert Mueller, the Federal Bureau 
     of Investigation's director, that ``as far as we know, they 
     contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the U.S.''.
       The report points out that five of the hijackers had met a 
     total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention as 
     part of counter-terrorism investigations.
       Four of those 14 were under active FBI investigation when 
     the hijackers were in the U.S.
       The hijackers who led the attacks were not isolated but 
     instead were backed by what U.S. intelligence knew to be ``a 
     radical Islamic network in the U.S. that could support al-
     Qaeda and other terrorist operatives.''
       As early as June 2001 the CIA had learned that senior al-
     Qaeda planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was recruiting people 
     for operations in the U.S.
       The report also revealed that an informant for the FBI had 
     numerous meetings with two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi 
     and Khalid al-Mihdhar, when they were living in San Diego. 
     But the San Diego FBI was unaware that the Central 
     Intelligence Agency had in 2000 identified the two men as al-
     Qaeda operatives, so never acted on the information.
       The FBI had also opened in 1998 a counter-terrorism 
     investigation of Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who co-signed the 
     lease on an apartment in San Diego rented by the two 
     hijackers, paid the first month's rent and organised a party 
     to welcome them into the community.
       Mr. Bayoumi became the subject of attention late last year 
     after it was revealed that the wife of Prince Bandar, the 
     Saudi ambassador to the U.S., had indirectly deposited tens 
     of thousands of dollars into an account held by Mr. Bayoumi's 
     wife. The Saudis have said they had no knowledge that the 
     money, which was part of a charitable contribution, had ended 
     up in her accounts.
       The report says that although Mr. Bayoumi was a student, he 
     ``had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi 
     Arabia'', and at one time made a $400,000 donation to a 
     Kurdish mosque in San Diego. It adds: ``One of the FBI's best 
     sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that 
     Mr. Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia 
     or another foreign power.''
       The Saudi government denies the charge, saying he has no 
     connection to the Saudi government.
       The most controversial element of the report will be what 
     it does not contain. At the insistence of the Bush 
     administration, 28 pages discussing evidence of foreign 
     government support for the hijackers was deleted from the 
     declassified version.
       ``The Bush administration has done everything they can do 
     to make sure that's not the focus,'' said William Wechsler, a 
     former White House official who co-authored a recent report 
     critical of the Saudi failure to cut off financing for 
     terrorist groups.
       ``They want to talk about tactical breakdown but they don't 
     want to talk about the elephant in the room.''
       U.S. officials note that Saudi co-operation in counter-
     terrorism investigations has improved markedly, particularly 
     following al-Qaeda attack's in Riyadh in May that left more 
     than 30 people dead. The Saudis responded angrily yesterday 
     that ``we cannot respond to blank pages''.
       But the investigation showed that even well after the 
     September 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia continued to impede U.S. 
     efforts in areas such as shutting down financing for 
     terrorism.
       While the congressional investigation was a 
     bipartisan undertaking, its conclusions will fuel a 
     partisan battle over whether the Bush administration has 
     responded fully to the lessons of September 11.
       Democrats have homed in on intelligence failures, both in 
     the war on terrorism and before the war on Iraq, as the 
     vulnerable spot for an administration that has been widely 
     trusted by Americans on national security since the attacks.
       The report challenges whether the administration has yet 
     made sufficient efforts to improve intelligence gathering and 
     sharing in response to the serious breakdowns uncovered by 
     the investigation.
       On foreign support for terrorists, the report says ``only 
     recently'', and in part due to the pressure from the 
     congressional inquiry, had the agencies tried to determine 
     the extent of the problem. ``This gap in US intelligence 
     coverage is unacceptable, given the magnitude and immediacy 
     of the potential risk to US national security,'' it says.
       Democratic hopefuls for the next presidential election, 
     including Senator Bob Graham, the former intelligence 
     committee chairman, are already seizing on the problems 
     identified by the inquiry to criticise the administration's 
     actions since September 11.
       The controversy over what is missing in the report will 
     only deepen those charges. Senator Joseph Lieberman, another 
     Democratic candidate, said yesterday that the administration 
     ``has, even today, failed to demand a full accounting of 
     intelligence failures, in order to ensure that they have been 
     corrected''.




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