Is This What’s in Those 28 Pages? Not just What, But Why?

Did the CIA meet with some of the 9/11 hijackers ahead of the attacks on New York and Washington? Did the Saudi government help finance those hijackers? Someone knows the answers, and soon, you might know as well.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the New York Times the so-called “28 pages,” a still-classified section from the official report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, may be released to the public as early as this summer. The full 838-page report, minus those pages, was published in December 2002.The pages detail Saudi Arabia’s involvement in funding the 9/11 hijackers, and were classified by then-President George W. Bush.

So What Do The 28 Pages Say?

Richard Clarke is the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism for the United States. He is best-known for trying to warn the Bush administration that a terror attack was imminent in the days preceding 9/11. As late as a July 5, 2001, White House meeting with the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and the INS, Clarke stated that “something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.”

Here’s what Clarke said at a security forum held this week in New York about what those 28 pages might reveal:

– 9/11 hijackers and Saudi citizens ,Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Al Hamzi met in San Diego with several other Saudis, including one who may have been a Saudi intelligence agent and another who was both an al Qaeda sympathizer and an employee of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

– The CIA also made contact with Midhar and Hamzi in San Diego, and unsuccessfully tried to “turn them,” i.e., recruit them to work for the United States. The CIA did not inform the FBI or others of this action until just before 9/11. (In a 2009 interview, Clarke speculated that the CIA would have used Saudi intelligence as an intermediary to approach the two al-Qaeda operatives.)

The rumors that Saudi charities and/or the spouse of then-Saudi ambassador to the United States Bandar bin Sultan (who went on to be director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014) directly funded the 9/11 hijackers per se are “overblown,” according to Clarke.
However, elements of Saudi charities and the ambassador himself did regularly provide funding to various Saudi citizens in the United States, for example, those needing money for medical care. It is possible that the 9/11 hijackers defrauded Saudi sources to obtain funds, but less clear that any Saudi government official knowingly funded persons for the purpose of committing 9/11.

Alongside Clapper, Clarke too believes the 28 pages will be released to the public within the next five to six weeks.

Don’t focus on the the What, But the Why

Should the full 28 pages be released, there will no doubt be enormous emphasis placed on what they say, specifically the degree to which they implicate elements of Saudi Arabia and/or the Saudi royal family in funding or supporting the 9/11 hijackers. If the CIA contact with some of the hijackers is confirmed, that will be explosive.
But after the what is the why, and that answer has the potential to affect the future, not just document the past.

– Why were the pages classified in the first place (who benefited?) and why did they stay classified now into a second administration, some 15 years after the events they discuss took place?

– Why did the CIA not reveal its contacts with the two 9/11 hijackers? Who benefits from this?

– Why would 2 successive Government administrations run interference for the Saudi’s? With Nearly half the U.S.population not believing the official story. Surely if you could,You would pin it on somebody to distract from your own guilt, wouldn’t you want to find a scapegoat?