9/11 Investigation Re-opening

April 26, 2013 • 7:55AM

A single sentence in the Continuing Appropriations Act for FY 2013 covering the Department of Justice and other agencies, provides that the money appropriated for FBI salaries and expenses shall include $500,000 "for a comprehensive review of the implementation of the recommendations related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that were proposed in the report issued by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." The House bill, H.R. 933, was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2013. The completed law is designated Public Law 113-6.

What does this "comprehensive review" entail? Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee with purview over funding of the DOJ, issued a press release on April 22 which quotes from a committee report published as the bill was pending. It is to be an "external review", and as indicated by the above-quoted language of the statute, much of it concerns the progress made by the FBI in implementing the Commission's recommendations (mandated in a 2007 law), and evaluating its capabilities to deal with trends of domestic terror attacks since 9/11. But item (3) of the prescribed "scope of review" is: "an assessment of any evidence now known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." The end of the report text quoted by Rep. Wolf says, "The FBI is encouraged, in carrying out this review, to draw upon the experience of the 9/11 Commissioners and staff."

That there is much to be reviewed under this provision, is indicated in a 9/11/12 article by former Senator Bob Graham with Sharon Premoli. Graham was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it and the House Intelligence Committee jointly investigated the 9/11 attacks. Graham and Premoli said that "The FBI withheld from the Congressional Inquiry, and from the subsequent 9/11 Commission, the fact that it had investigated another potential support pod for the hijackers in Sarasota, Florida." This concerned the fact that "several hijackers, including their leader Mohamed Atta, repeatedly visited the home of a Saudi couple in a suburban gated community. ... The Saudi couple abruptly left their posh home, bound for Saudi Arabia, about two weeks before 9/11. The husband and his father-in-law were apparently on a watch list at the FBI and a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11."

An excellent first step in the process, is for Congress to disclose to the public, the 28 pages of the Joint Report which are blacked out in the version available to the public, and which are said to concern the role of Saudi Arabia in the attacks.