[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]A[/dropcap]t the heart of the matter is 28 pages of the original Congressional report which probed the 9/11 attack on twin towers. These 28 pages were never released since it is supposed to link some members of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as abettors of that crime.
Now the US Congress is considering a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
As of now the bill is an anomaly in a Congress fractured by bitter partisanship, especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative senators, including Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. It passed through the Judiciary Committee in January without dissent.
Now the US is faced with a Saudi threat to offload its holdings of nearly USD 750 billions of US treasury bills etc if the US Congress proceeds further which might end up having a large number of claims on KSA by affected citizens.
But interestingly how much KSA holds in US assets is unclear.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]T[/dropcap]heir actual composition remains as a secret because while the US discloses the explicit Treasury holdings of all other nations, Saudi Arabia’s holdings, for some unknown reason, are not officially disclosed.
“It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars,” Bloomberg wrote of Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings.
“As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria,” Bloomberg goes on to note, adding that the rules are different for almost everyone else. Although Saudi Arabia’s “secret” is protected by “an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department,” for more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds.”
The Obama administration, meanwhile, seems far less concerned about the market impact of a Saudi liquidation, and far more worried about what a real inquiry into the Saudi role of Sept.11 would reveal (and who it would implicate) and as a result is building straw man arguments that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas. In fact, as the NY Times reports,”Obama has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.”
“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.
Stunning indeed, and yet that’s precisely who the “U.S.” president sides with when attempting to get to the bottom of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The 60-minute segment talked about the 28 pages that were left out of the 9/11 report.
Is it sensitive Steve, might it involve opening a bit of can of worms, or some snakes crawling out of there, yes.
That’s how the latest “60 Minutes” segment ended. [CBS News—10th April 2016]
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]T[/dropcap]he comment was in reference to the final chapter of a Congressional investigative report into 9/11 that has been left out of the report due to it being classified. The congressional investigative report is a report that was completed and handed over to the 9/11 commission, who ultimately produced the final “official” report.
The 28 pages that were classified have only been seen by a select few, and allegedly have to do with details around the existence of a possible Saudi support system for the hijackers while they were in the US among other implications of official Saudi involvement.
The push to declassify the documents is being led by then Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), who has been a strong advocate of the documents being declassified since the Bush administration classified them due to matters of national security back in 2003.
Point blank, the Democratic senator said the hijackers were “substantially” supported by the Saudi government, as well as charities and wealthy people in that country.
The missing 28-pages answer if Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Congressional member Graham [D-FL] was more explicit:
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]”I[/dropcap] think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom never been in the United States before, many of whom didn’t have a high school education, could’ve carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” Graham said.
For now, only a handful of people knows for sure: those who have seen the contents of the 28 classified pages. And here are some notable quotes by those that have actually read these 28 pages:
I think it is implausible to believe that nineteen people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many of whom didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States.
Interviewer: You believe that support came from Saudi Arabia
Graham: Substantially
Interviewer: When you say the Saudis you mean the government, rich people in the country, charities
Graham: All of the above
You can’t provide the money for terrorists and then say I don’t have anything to do with what they were doing.
In general, the 9/11 commission did not get every single detail of the conspiracy. We didn’t have the time, we didn’t have the resources. And we certainly didn’t pursue the entire line of inquiry in regards to Saudi Arabia.
The papers are currently locked in a guarded vault beneath the Capitol called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Very few people have access to these sites, and visitors are not allowed to bring in cameras or recording devices.
Cho S Ramaswamy Visiting Chair Professor of Public policy[CRVCPPP]
Sastra University
An expert in Finance and a two times Fulbright Scholar, Prof. R Vaidyanathan is a much sought after author, speaker and TV commentator on all items related to Money and Finance.
- नकली खबर लक्षण है, बीमारी नहीं! - April 16, 2018
- Fake News/ Accreditation and Sedition - April 4, 2018
- Two Poisonous Seeds - March 15, 2018
