Major French TV Channel Airs Exposé of 28 Pages

The France 5 public television channel on Feb. 13 ran a five-minute segment on the classified 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, during the program “C Dans L’Air,” introduced as the “pages that could change our perception of the 9/11 attacks.” To heighten the suspense, the presenter straightaway declares that two of the hijackers “were lodged and financed by an individual from the Saudi Embassy” in Washington.

Since the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and other targets in Paris on Jan. 7, coverage of the Saudi rôle in financing terrorism has finally broken through in France, with prominent exposés run in major print media such as Paris Match, Le Figaro, L’Express and 20 minutes, as well as in Belgium on radio and TV network RTBF. France5 TV is particularly important, as it prides itself on being a “serious” channel, devoted to “factual reporting,” documentaries, and talk shows.

Amid dramatic scenes of the attacks in New York City, their Feb. 13 program shows a clip from the Jan. 7 press conference of former Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry, where he states that the 28 pages contain information on Saudi financing of the attacks. “The American people have a right to know who are our friends and who are our enemies,” Graham says.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, the show notes, and it focuses on two of them who received financing in the United States from Omar Al Bayoumi, “who is suspected by the FBI of being a secret agent of the Wahhabite regime” in Riyadh.

A short clip of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) from the Sept. 9, 2014, press conference is shown, in which he says how shocked he was when he read the classified 28 pages, and that every American should have the same experience.

Significantly, the video then switches to George W. Bush, who had originally classified the pages, saying, “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” That was followed by videos of the bombing of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with the obvious implication, that they were done on fraudulent grounds.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) is also quoted from an interview on the importance of declassification of the 28 pages, as well as Bill Doyle, the father of one of the 9/11 victims, who says that after Osama bin Laden was killed, President Obama told him: “‘Bill, I promise you, I am going to release those 28 pages.’ But he did not keep his promise.”

France5’s presenter references the recent charges by the “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, confirming the rôle of Saudis in the 9/11 attacks.

Right after that are shown images of Barack Obama meeting the new Saudi King and warmly greeting other Saudi officials, with Michelle Obama in the background. The comment to that: “Americans are upset by the fact that Barack Obama went to Saudi Arabia after the death of King Abdullah, whereas no U.S. officials took part in the Jan. 11 march in Paris,” after the Jan. 7 terrorist attacks there.

We then see an unidentified American man asking, “So what are you afraid of, Bush? Why don’t you and Obama get together and release the documents? After all, you are either with us, or with the terrorists.”

It ends by reporting that two senators (sic), one Republican and one Democrat — obviously referring to Jones and Lynch — have co-sponsored a resolution in Congress calling for declassification of the 28 pages.

The five-minute segment was also embedded in an hour-long roundtable on “C Dans L’Air,” with four specialists in varying areas of anti-terrorism, on “Terrorism’s Dirty Money”; it’s available here at minute 32, and worth watching even if you don’t speak French.