9/11 Commissioner Says Saudi Government Members Supported the Attack

“Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

Balkis Press/Sipa USA/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A former member of the 9/11 Commission says Saudi government officials offered support to the hijackers, and he joined the growing chorus calling for the government to release 28 classified pages of the commission’s report that may detail the roles those Saudi officials played.

John Lehman, a former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, told the Guardian, “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government.” Details of their involvement are found in the 28 classified pages of the 9/11 Commission report, he said. The Obama administration says it may release those pages soon.

The original report found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” and the commission’s leaders wrote an op-ed last month saying that the 28 classified pages should not be released. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission’s chairman and vice-chairman, argued that “the 28 pages were based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI” and were more akin to “preliminary law enforcement notes,” not solid evidence.

But Lehman says the report was too lenient on the Saudis, and that the commission saw “an awful lot of circumstantial evidence” that Saudi officials, likely members of the kingdom’s Islamic affairs ministry, were involved. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia,” he said during his Guardian interview.

Saudi Arabian officials have a long history of backing armed fundamentalist movements, from anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan during the 1980s to Islamist rebel groups in the Syrian civil war. The kingdom is also a frequent target of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who believe the US government helped cover up high-level Saudi complicity in the attacks. Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has suggested the same thing on the campaign trail. “Who blew up the World Trade Center?” he said during an appearance on Fox News in February. “It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi—take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate