9/11 secrets

Preliminary decision on secret 9/11 pages expected this week

The nation’s top intelligence official will tell the White House this week whether or not he supports declassifying 28 secret pages from a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he told lawmakers on Tuesday evening.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), one of two sitting House lawmakers and a former senator to attend the 50-minute meeting, appeared hopeful that Director of National Intelligence James Clapperwould move to declassify the 28 pages, which are believed to detail suspected links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the al Qaeda hijackers.

“He is going to, at the end of the week, send his recommendation to the White House,” Jones told The Hill in an interview in the Capitol on Wednesday.

“I felt like he feels that the families and the American people have a right [to see the pages],” Jones added. “But he didn’t say it. I have to be true about that.”

9/11 secrets

Obama Under Pressure to Declassify the 9/11 Report’s Secret 28 Pages

One of the ongoing mysteries in Washington is why the Obama administration is still classifying 28 pages of a congressional report written in 2003 that documents Saudi support for the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The bipartisan co-authors of that report have long called for its release to the public, and President Obama on two separate occasions over the last several years promised the 9/11 families that he would declassify the 28 pages.

Now pressure on Obama to make good on his promise is mounting. Advocates claim there is no longer any reason to protect the Saudis 15 years after the attacks. Government insiders argue there’s nothing in the 28 pages that they don’t already know, and making them public will only roil an important strategic relationship at a time when it’s already under significant strain.

Into this volatile mix marches 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS News show, with a hard-hitting report Sunday on the making of those 28 pages, and a renewed push by those with the most direct knowledge of what they contain to finally make them public. As the 60 Minutes segment points out, Obama is traveling to Saudi Arabia in 10 days, a trip that comes in the midst of his administration’s review of whether to go ahead with the de-classification.