Nato
a Cantù il 28 febbraio del 1990, entro nella redazione de ilGiornale.it
nel dicembre del 2014. Da sempre appassionato di politica estera, ho
scritto assieme ad Andrea Indini “Isis segreto”, “il tuffo fisico di due
cronisti dentro la melassa del terrorismo islamico”, per usare le
parole del direttore de ilGiornale Alessandro Sallusti. Attualmente sto
dedicando i miei approfondimenti alla figura di Vladimir Putin. Sono
sposato con Margherita.
A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission, breaking
dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday he believes
there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a
support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration
should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on
Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.
The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who
was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first
serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004
final report that was largely read as an exoneration of
Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.
“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in
supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi
government,” Lehman said in an interview, suggesting that the commission
may have made a mistake by not stating that explicitly in its final
report. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of
Saudi Arabia.”
He was critical of a statement released late last month by the
former chairman and vice-chairman of the commission, who urged the Obama
administration to be cautious about releasing the full congressional
report on the Saudis and 9/11 –
“the 28 pages”, as they are widely known in Washington – because they contained “raw, unvetted” material that might smear innocent people.
The 9/11 commission chairman, former Republican governor Tom Kean of
New Jersey, and vice-chairman, former Democratic congressman Lee
Hamilton of Indiana, praised Saudi Arabia as, overall, “an ally of the
United States in combatting terrorism” and said the commission’s
investigation, which came after the congressional report was written,
had identified only one Saudi government official – a former diplomat in
the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles – as being “implicated in the 9/11
plot investigation”.
The diplomat,
Fahad al-Thumairy,
who was deported from the US but was never charged with a crime, was
suspected of involvement in a support network for two Saudi hijackers
who had lived in San Diego the year before the attacks.
In the interview Wednesday, Lehman said Kean and Hamilton’s statement
that only one Saudi government employee was “implicated” in supporting
the hijackers in California and elsewhere was “a game of semantics” and
that the commission had been aware of at least five Saudi government
officials who were strongly suspected of involvement in the terrorists’
support network.
“They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly
implicated,” he said. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial
evidence.”
The
9/11 commission vice-chairman, former Democratic congressman Lee
Hamilton of Indiana, and the chairman, former Republican governor Tom
Kean of New Jersey. Photograph: Paul J.richards/AFP/Getty ImagesAlthough
Lehman said he did not believe that the Saudi royal family
or the country’s senior civilian leadership had any role in supporting
al-Qaida or the 9/11 plot, he recalled that a focus of the criminal
investigation after 9/11 was upon employees of the Saudi ministry of
Islamic affairs, which had sponsored Thumairy for his job in Los Angeles
and has long been suspected of ties to extremist groups.He said “the 28
pages”, which were prepared by a special House-Senate
committee investigating pre-9/11 intelligence failures, reviewed much
of the same material and ought to be made public as soon as possible,
although possibly with redactions to remove the names of a few Saudi
suspects who were later cleared of any involvement in the terrorist
attacks.Lehman has support among some of the other commissioners,
although
none have spoken out so bluntly in criticizing the Saudis. A Democratic
commissioner, former congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana, said he wants
the congressional report released to end some of the wild speculation
about what is in the 28 pages and to see if parts of the inquiry should
be reopened. When it comes to the Saudis, he said, “we still haven’t
gotten to the bottom of what happened on 9/11”They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated. There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence
John Lehman
Another panel member, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of
offending the other nine, said the 28 pages should be released even
though they could damage the commission’s legacy – “fairly or unfairly” –
by suggesting lines of investigation involving the Saudi government
that were pursued by Congress but never adequately explored by the
commission.
“I think we were tough on the Saudis, but obviously not tough
enough,” the commissioner said. “I know some members of the staff felt
we went much too easy on the Saudis. I didn’t really know the extent of
it until after the report came out.”
The commissioner said the renewed public debate could force a
spotlight on a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11
commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely
protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the
final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi
officials – especially at lower levels of the government – were part of
an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers
after they arrived in the US.
In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis,
between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive director,
University of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush
administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of state,
Condoleezza Rice, after leaving the commission. The staff included
experienced investigators from the FBI, the Department of Justice and
the CIA, as well as the congressional staffer who was the principal
author of the 28 pages.Zelikow fired a staffer, who had repeatedly protested over
limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she obtained a copy of the
28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described an
angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two
investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush
back to the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their
astonishment that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie
to 9/11 was being edited out of the report or was being pushed to tiny,
barely readable footnotes and endnotes. The staff protests were mostly
overruled.
The 9/11 commission did criticize Saudi Arabia for its sponsorship of
a fundamentalist branch of Islam embraced by terrorists and for the
Saudi royal family’s relationship with charity groups that bankrolled
al-Qaida before 9/11.George W Bush, with Lee Hamilton on the left, speaks to the press after
receiving a report of the Iraq study group. Photograph: Larry
Downing/REUTERS
However, the commission’s final report was still widely read as an
exoneration, with a central finding by the commission that there was “no
evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi
officials individually” provided financial assistance to Osama bin
Laden’s terrorist network. The statement was hailed by the Saudi
government as effectively clearing Saudi officials of any tie to 9/11.
Last month
Barack Obama, returning from a tense state visit to Saudi Arabia,
disclosed the administration was nearing a decision on whether to
declassify some or all of the 28 pages, which have been held under lock
and key in a secure room beneath the Capitol since they were written in
2002. Just days after the president’s comments however, his CIA
director, John Brennan, announced that he opposed the release of the
congressional report, saying it contained inaccurate material that might
lead to unfair allegations that Saudi Arabia was tied to 9/11.
In their joint statement last month, Kean and Hamilton suggested they agreed with Brennan and that there might be danger in releasing the full 28 pages.
The congressional report was “based almost entirely on raw, unvetted
material that came to the FBI”, they said. “The 28 pages, therefore, are
comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are generally
covered by grand jury secrecy rules.” If any part of the congressional
report is made public, they said, it should be redacted “to protect the
identities of anyone who has been ruled out by authorities as having any
connection to the 9/11 plot”.
Zelikow, the commission’s executive director, told NBC News last
month that the 28 pages “provide no further answers about the 9/11
attacks that are not already included in the 9/11 commission report”.
Making them public “will only make the red herring glow redder”.
But Kean, Hamilton and Zelikow clearly do not speak for a number of
the other commissioners, who have repeatedly suggested they are
uncomfortable with the perception that the commission exonerated Saudi
Arabia and who have joined in calling for public release of the 28
pages.
Lehman and another commissioner, former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey
of Nebraska, filed affidavits last year in support of a lawsuit brought
against the Saudi government by the families of 9/11 victims.
“Significant questions remain unanswered concerning possible involvement
of Saudi government institutions and actors,” Kerrey said. Lehman
agreed: “Contrary to the argument advocated by the Kingdom, the 9/11
commission did not exonerate Saudi Arabia of culpability for the events
of 11 September 2001 or the financing of al-Qaida.” He said he was
“deeply troubled” by the evidence gathered about a hijackers’ support
network in California.In an interview last week, congressman Roemer, the Democratic
commissioner, suggested a compromise in releasing the 28 pages. He said
that, unlike Kean and Hamilton, he was eager to see the full
congressional report declassified and made public, although the 28 pages
should be released alongside a list of pertinent excerpts of the 9/11
commission’s final report. “That would show what allegations were and
were not proven, so that innocent people are not unfairly maligned,” he
said. “It would also show there are issues raised in the 28 pages about
the Saudis that are still unresolved to this day.”
Asked on Thursday if he had any comment on Lehman’s claim about
individuals working for the Saudi government, White House press
secretary Josh Earnest gave a two word answer: “I don’t.”
- Philip Shenon is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation
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