Sen. Graham Gives Delivers Powerful Call to Release the 28 Pages, Leads Memorial Events on 9/11

Former Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, spoke Thursday night at a UCLA forum organized there at the Hammer Forum, where he delivered a thorough and systematic review of the public record on Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks and called for the 28 pages of the 9/11 report to be declassified and released to the public. On the panel with him was former CIA agent and author Robert Baer, an expert on Islamic terrorism.

“One of the most under-discussed and most important issues” facing our nation is the report on 9/11 and the networks behind it, Graham said in opening.  He began by quoting the first witness to the Joint Congressional Inquiry—a woman who lost her husband in the attack on the World Trade Center.  “All we have are tears and the resolve to find the answers,” she told the committee, saying, “we have an obligation” to those children to provide the answer as to “why their mother or father never returned” on 9/11.

Sen. Graham’s speech and his answers to questions were, according to EIR editorial board member Jeff Steinberg, “a thoroughly composed documentary account” of the Saudi involvement.  In the question period, all of the questions were riveted on the Saudi role, and Graham focused on the legislation calling for the release of the 28 pages and the crucial fight for the release before us now.

In his presentation, Baer said that what really disturbs him is that the 28 pages have not been made public. “Just like the Kennedy assassination,” he said, “you have to get this stuff out.”  He said that based on the nature of the intelligence in that report, “it would be very easy for the FBI and CIA” to pursue these networks.  “But this administration as the last administration does not want to deal with the truth.”

The full program can be watched here.

This event is accompanied by a large number of articles and TV spots that highlight the fight for releasing the 28 classified pages, especially in Boston, where two planes were hijacked and where Rep. Stephen Lynch is co-sponsor with North Carolina Republican Walter Jones of the bill to release the pages.

THE SUN-HERALD IN FLORIDA has an article by investigative reporter Dan Christensen, whose publication, Floridabulldog.com has an FOIA suit against the Justice Department.  The article quotes Sen. Graham, lawyers for the 9/11 families, and court documents, and recounts that “the FBI’s Tampa field office alone holds 80,000 classified pages in its 9/11 file,” including “details of a once-secret FBI investigation of a Saudi family with apparent ties to the 9/11 hijackers” who fled Florida suddenly.

THE BOSTON HERALD interviewed Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) on his bipartisan legislation to declassify the 28 pages, writing, “’We still don’t have the complete story on the weeks and months of preparation by the hijackers,’ Lynch told the Herald. ‘We owe it to the families … transparency and truth is the best way to deal with this.’”  The article also quotes James Kreindler, a lead attorney in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit since 2002, where he says, “The Saudis provided the key financial support through charities, and then Saudi officials met a couple of the hijackers and got them their apartments, some English classes, flight school, and made sure they could sit tight and not get caught before 9/11.”

A new Fox News investigative news program, Full Measure with Sharyll Attkisson, aired what Fox describes as “a detailed look at the still-simmering controversy over the classification of 28 pages from a 2002 9/11 report that are said to indicate that the hijackers received financial and logistical support from Saudi Arabia.” The report includes interviews with Rep. Lynch, former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, and Terry Strada, the 9/11 widow and activist who spoke at a Schiller Institute event in Manhattan.

The website 28pages.org has posted several other major articles and statements, including a recent call by former FBI agent Mark Rossini, and a statement by national security whistle blowers Thomas Drake (NSA) and Coleen Rowley (FBI) to release the 28 pages.