Author: ogden.matthew

Ambassador Jack Matlock, who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, was the featured speaker at an event that took place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday evening, Feb. 11, 2015, sponsored by the Committee for the Republic. What follows is the video and transcript of his opening remarks. The transcript was provided courtesy EIR.

Former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, addresses an event sponsored by the Committee for the Republic at the National Press Club on Feb. 11, 2015.

The last quite a few years, we have been basically living outside the Washington Beltway. It’s always nice to come back and see friends, though I must confess that I’m sometimes puzzled, sitting out in the boondocks, at what goes on here. Because there seems to be group-think about many things in foreign policy—it affects both the media and those in the government—that to me I find more and more difficult to comprehend.

I didn’t understand they wanted me to talk for 20 minutes—I prepared something that I hoped I could say in 40. So, what I’m going to give you is a barebones summary of how I view the situation, and what I think we should be seeing about it, and expect you to ask me questions that I can actually expand a bit on the details.

I think we’re in a very dangerous situation right now, in regard to Russia, over Ukraine. Six months ago, a year ago, when people were talking about Cold War II, I said, this is silly; this is not Cold War II. The Cold War was about a worldwide confrontation over ideology; it was about communism. And the conflict with communism. And it occurred all over. Latin America, Africa, Asia.

Now what we’re seeing now is a conflict in an area which 30 years ago would have been a local problem, in one country. How can that lead us to Cold War II?

However, as things have developed, and as I see debates now as to whether the United States should supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, I wonder what is going on.

When I see all these debates and saying, oh, Russia’s only a regional power. What does that mean? What does that mean particularly in their own region? And I think the elephant in the room, which nobody is referring to, is the nuclear issue. No country which has ICBMs, ICBMs—10 independently targetted warheads, very accurate, mobile (so they can’t be taken out)—no country with that is a regional power, by any means. It can mean other things.

The most important thing we did in ending the Cold War was cooling the nuclear arms race. If there are any issues for this country to face, that are existential, that’s it.

Now let’s face it. Much as I respect and love the people in Ukraine—and I do know them. I was probably the only American ambassador to the Soviet Union who could and did make speeches in Ukrainian when I went to Kiev, as well as in Russian when I was in Moscow. I do know that country. I know its literature and its culture. I prized it. My heart goes out to the people who are going through hell in Eastern Ukraine this winter.

But, I’ll tell you. If the United States gets further involved in what is, in the minds of the Russians, territory which has historically been part of their country, given the present atmosphere, I don’t see how we are going to prevent another nuclear arms race. And that’s what scares me.

Now, how did this all come about?

It does seem to me that when we ended the Cold War, we had a coherent policy. Believe it or not. That’s very rare in American foreign policy, particularly recently, in my time. We did. Our goal, and that of our allies, and that of the Soviet leaders, and their successor Russian leaders, was a Europe whole and free. A Europe whole and free.

Now, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether President Gorbachov was promised that there would be no NATO expansion to the East. There was no treaty signed saying that. But as we negotiated an agreement to end the Cold War, first President Bush, at a Malta meeting in 1989, and then later, in 1990, almost all the Western leaders, told Gorbachov: if you remove your troops from Eastern Europe, if you let Eastern Europe go free, then we will not take advantage of it.

Now, there’s no way, by moving an alliance that was originally designed to protect Western Europe from the aggression of the East, you move it to the East—how are you going to keep a Europe whole and free? If you have a Europe whole and free, Russia and all the others have to be part of the system.

So, later, not out of design, but simply, I think, largely because of domestic politics, and the East Europeans, who wanted protection against a threat that at that point didn’t exist, but it might in the future, we started expanding NATO.

The Russian reaction at first was not that negative, but then other things began to happen. After 9/11, then President Putin was the first foreign president to call President Bush and offer cooperation and support. And we got it, when we invaded Afghanistan. We got their vote in the UN. We got intelligence support and other support, logistics support, in getting there.

What did they get in return?

He also removed, without our request, a base, a listening station, in Cuba, and one in Cam Ranh Bay. We walk out of the ABM Treaty, which was the basis of all of our arms control treaties, and the one in which we could deal with each other as equals. We keep on expanding NATO, and not only expand it, we begin to talk about bases there, about deploying anti-ballistic missiles, for no good reason at all. Supposedly it was to defend the Europeans against the Iranians—the Iranians at that point didn’t have missiles that could attack them, nor was it apparent to many of us why the Iranians would ever want to attack the Europeans. What are they going to get out of that?

The Russian reaction was again to be increasingly hostile. And of course, we had the outburst in Munich, in 2006, by President Putin.

Now, there are a lot of explanations other than… We didn’t set out—I’ll make this clear—to stick it to Russia. I don’t think there was any intent. We had a lot of reasons, mainly domestic political reasons, to follow these courses. But, we were simply ignoring the Russian reaction, and the inevitable Russian reaction.

And so what we began to get was a reaction from what you could say was, at best, inconsiderate American actions, to a Russian over-reaction. And you know, when you set up these vibrations, they can be amplified. Small ones can get bigger and bigger and bigger. Cosmologists tell us, for example, that maybe all of the universe began with a single singularity, and you get these vibrations.

But the process was, that we developed an atmosphere, which, even before this Ukrainian crisis broke upon us, was one of alleged hostility, perceived hostility, I should say, between us. Something that we had when at the end of the Cold War, we had ended. And an attitude on both sides that we were facing each other not only as competitors, but adversaries, and that we were in, what you call a zero-sum game. Anything that the U.S. wanted, would be to Russia’s detriment. Anything that Russia wanted, is to the U.S. detriment.

That was precisely the attitude that we put an end to, to end the Cold War.

Just a couple of words about how we did it.

I was thinking back, when we got into all of this. Okay, you know, by the mid-80s, we were in one of the most intense confrontations with the Soviet Union. The Europeans at that point were talking about Cold War II; the rhetoric was high. And what was the attitude, and the policies, that we followed then in order to put an end to this?

And I pulled out something I had almost forgotten about. It was a memo that President Reagan wrote, in his own hand-writing, just before he met Gorbachov the first time. Simple language, but his insights into how you deal with, at that time, what’s our principal adversary. And I don’t have time actually to quote them—I have his words here—but there are four points there that I wanted to quote.

One was, he started out by saying, Gorbachov is going to be a tough negotiator, but I have to remember that he has to justify what he does to the Politburo back home. In other words, he’s not a dictator.

Second, he defined what he considered the three most important areas that we had to deal with. They were: arms control, our conflict in third areas, and the distrust between us. The distrust between us. And he understood, that until we worked on that, we weren’t going to solve the other.

Human rights? He said we’re much too upfront on human rights. We will get a lot of cheers from the bleachers by beating up on them on human rights, but it will not help the people involved. In fact, it could hurt them. And he went on to say, we’ve got to go private. It’s too important to confront them.

And he concluded this memo by saying, whatever we achieve, we must not consider it victory, because that will simply make the next achievement more difficult.

You have, in a nutshell, a description, I would say, of what, in the last 15 years at least, we have been doing the opposite. And I think what Reagan understood—he was not a specialist in a lot of these other things, he had people to work on that—what he understood was human relations. And he also understood, unlike many of the people on his staff, that the other side are made up also of human beings, with their own politics, their own requirements. And number one, you’ve got to deal with them with respect, and you’ve got to deal with them in a way that you don’t expect them to do something that is not in the true interest of their country.

So, our effort then was simply, that we needed to convince the Soviet leader—and in this case, eventually, Gorbachov—that their past policy was not serving their interests. And it was not!

Now one thing he never did—he called the system an Evil Empire once. People would never let him forget it. He also later said it wasn’t any more. But he never denigrated any Soviet leader by name. He would begin every conversation, whether it was a foreign minister, or the President—”we hold the peace of the world in our hands. We must cooperate.”

In other words, he met them as human beings, even though he disliked the system for very good reason. He dealt with them with respect.

Now, what do we see has happened? I can give you a lot of details when you ask questions about it, but obviously, we’re in an entirely different mode with Russia. And I would say it’s not just the President—in fact, the worst offender by far is the U.S. Congress. And what Russia has been reacting to what they consider insufferable arrogance and humiliation for several years.

Now, they may exaggerate a lot of that, but it has led to the fact that we seem to be operating off two entirely different, and both of them unfounded, narratives. The Russians feel that we are out, we intend to create a world empire, if not an empire, at least hegemony, and that our goal is to hem them in, to surround them, and to keep them as simply supplier of raw materials, and determine not to treat them as, you might say, equals. They know their economy is not on [24:25], they know they don’t have the military that we do, but is that we are supposed to respect when we deal with other people? Is there a gradation that the more powerful you are, the more right you are?

Our actions, in many cases, descend to that.

And obviously, this narrative picks up on some things that are half truths, some things that are other, some things that are exaggerated, misunderstandings — but, to them, this is a contest over what is their vital interest.

Now, the American narrative, of course, is quite different. It is that you have the recurrence in Russia of a autocratic system that has taken away the possibility of democracy from Russia, has turned it once again into an autocracy, and has begun to threaten its neighbors. Never mind that these neighbors were part of the country 30 years ago. And never mind that none of them fought for their independence. It was handed them.

But, you get these two narratives, and, of course, we’re reading opeds right now, to save the world system of peace, we must provide arms to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves, etc., etc., etc.

It seems to me that both of these narratives are wrong. Ours is based upon a total misunderstanding of the end of the Cold War! How many have heard we won the Cold War? You were defeated. How many have heard, the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union broke up? The fact is we negotiated an end to the Cold War, which was to the benefit of both countries. And the understanding then was, that we were creating a Europe whole and free, as I mentioned.

The breakup of the Soviet Union occurred over two years after the Cold War had ended, and it ended definitively. And it broke up because of internal pressures, and that breakup, that breakup was led by the elected leader of Russia.

Now, you have part of their narrative now. Because of our triumphalism, ah yes, they fooled Gorbachov. In fact, some would say the CIA hired him. He betrayed us, you see. They were after us all the time, they wanted to break up the Soviet Union, they’re responsible for breaking it up.

Totally the opposite of the truth. And yet, step after step, these narratives—both of which are wrong—at best exaggerated, but both have elements that are simply the opposite of the truth. And yet, both countries seem to be developing their policies on it.

Let me add another element now, which I find particularly disturbing, and that is the personalization of the whole relationship. It’s hard to read anything in most of our press that doesn’t attribute all the Russian actions to one man, and that man is usually characterized in the most unflattering terms, with various names. This is true both of the media, which, of course, can call things as they wish, but also of our officials quote. You know, it seemed to me that if you really want to settle the situation, you set up, in effect, a public duel between your President and other person, particularly when the other president has most of the marbles in the nation at issue.

When President Putin says we’re not going to allow the Ukrainian situation to be resolved by military means, he means it. And no amount of shouting about this is going to change that. And for the president of the United States to appear to challenge him to do other things, simply has a negative effect.

Now, I’m one who actually… I thought the President did a fine State of the Union address, as long as he was dealing with domestic issues. I know Congress is not going to approve it, but that’s going to be a good platform for whoever runs on the Democratic ticket in 2016. But his comments about President Putin, it seems to me, were totally out of place, and can only have a negative effect.

So, I think that one thing that we need to do, is to get this personal debate at the top of government out. We really have to stop that, because it’s got a negative effect! When you say, I’ve isolated him, he’s losing, look, you didn’t like what I was doing, but this guy’s losing—what’s his reaction? I’ll show you if I’m losing!

So, who wins from that sort of exchange?

But the biggest problem really hasn’t been the President. He’s been much better on many of these issues than Congress. And I would say one of the most outrageous things, that did much to create the atmosphere that we are in, which is one that nobody is going to benefit from, was the Magnitsky Act. Here you have the United States Congress, which in that year could not even pass a budget, passing a law about a court case in Moscow, where it was alleged that the lawyer was mistreated, and he died while he was in detention. That was potentially a real scandal in Moscow.

So, what does the U.S. Congress do? They pass legislation requiring the Administration to identify publicly, and take action, to deny visas to specific people who might have been involved. One of the things when I was amabassador in Moscow, I would talk about a lot, is how we really need to respect the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Here we have a case, in another jurisdiction—there may have been a scandal there, there may not have been—a law is passed, limited to Russia, by name, and when, I know, one Congressman was asked about it, he said, oh, it’s not about Russia, it’s about human rights.

If it’s not about Russia, why did you limit it to Russia? And I would point out, that was at a time when the United States had torturers and was not prosecuting them. Was that any concern to the American Congress? It was a time that, since then, we have learned that were several prisoners on death row who were proved to be innocent. And so on. It would seem to me that the U.S. Congress should pay a little more attention. And I would just say, on the whole human rights issue, I think we Americans have to understand: yes, human rights are important, very important. But you do not protect them by public pressure on another country, particularly when you are unwilling to judge yourself.

The State Department, now for decades, has to report on human rights in every country in the world, but one—want guess which one that is? [laughter] And what sends the Russians up the wall is the language we use, which we don’t understand how it’s [34.17 —understood?] outside. When we say, we are an exceptional people, we’re capable of doing good things, protecting other people, and so on—they read it as saying that the rules don’t apply to us, unless we want them to. And we act that way.

I’ll just make one more addition here, and then we can go to questions, and that is, it seems to me when I really looked at what our policies have been, which has—given their reaction, and this is not something the U.S. has created singlehandedly—what we have gotten has been action/reaction, insults followed by insults, answered and so on. So this process is one—I wonder, when I think about how the policy is made, I was wondering—how do you characterize this?

We’ve heard a lot recently about autism, and whether there’s any connection with vaccination and so on. And suddenly, I said, you know, we have an autistic foreign policy! Let me read you—I went back and looked at the actual definition of autism.

“Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior.”

When the Congress of the United States votes over 30 times in a legislation they know is never going to become law, I would say that is restricted and repetitive behavior, and the problem is really an autistic foreign policy.

Ambassador Jack Matlock, who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, was the featured speaker at an event that took place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday evening, Feb. 11, 2015, sponsored by the Committee for the Republic. What follows is the video and transcript of his opening remarks.

Former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, addresses an event sponsored by the Committee for the Republic at the National Press Club on Feb. 11, 2015.

The last quite a few years, we have been basically living outside the Washington Beltway. It’s always nice to come back and see friends, though I must confess that I’m sometimes puzzled, sitting out in the boondocks, at what goes on here. Because there seems to be group-think about many things in foreign policy—it affects both the media and those in the government—that to me I find more and more difficult to comprehend.

I didn’t understand they wanted me to talk for 20 minutes—I prepared something that I hoped I could say in 40. So, what I’m going to give you is a barebones summary of how I view the situation, and what I think we should be seeing about it, and expect you to ask me questions that I can actually expand a bit on the details.

I think we’re in a very dangerous situation right now, in regard to Russia, over Ukraine. Six months ago, a year ago, when people were talking about Cold War II, I said, this is silly; this is not Cold War II. The Cold War was about a worldwide confrontation over ideology; it was about communism. And the conflict with communism. And it occurred all over. Latin America, Africa, Asia.

Now what we’re seeing now is a conflict in an area which 30 years ago would have been a local problem, in one country. How can that lead us to Cold War II?

However, as things have developed, and as I see debates now as to whether the United States should supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, I wonder what is going on.

When I see all these debates and saying, oh, Russia’s only a regional power. What does that mean? What does that mean particularly in their own region? And I think the elephant in the room, which nobody is referring to, is the nuclear issue. No country which has ICBMs, ICBMs—10 independently targetted warheads, very accurate, mobile (so they can’t be taken out)—no country with that is a regional power, by any means. It can mean other things.

The most important thing we did in ending the Cold War was cooling the nuclear arms race. If there are any issues for this country to face, that are existential, that’s it.

Now let’s face it. Much as I respect and love the people in Ukraine—and I do know them. I was probably the only American ambassador to the Soviet Union who could and did make speeches in Ukrainian when I went to Kiev, as well as in Russian when I was in Moscow. I do know that country. I know its literature and its culture. I prized it. My heart goes out to the people who are going through hell in Eastern Ukraine this winter.

But, I’ll tell you. If the United States gets further involved in what is, in the minds of the Russians, territory which has historically been part of their country, given the present atmosphere, I don’t see how we are going to prevent another nuclear arms race. And that’s what scares me.

Now, how did this all come about?

It does seem to me that when we ended the Cold War, we had a coherent policy. Believe it or not. That’s very rare in American foreign policy, particularly recently, in my time. We did. Our goal, and that of our allies, and that of the Soviet leaders, and their successor Russian leaders, was a Europe whole and free. A Europe whole and free.

Now, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether President Gorbachov was promised that there would be no NATO expansion to the East. There was no treaty signed saying that. But as we negotiated an agreement to end the Cold War, first President Bush, at a Malta meeting in 1989, and then later, in 1990, almost all the Western leaders, told Gorbachov: if you remove your troops from Eastern Europe, if you let Eastern Europe go free, then we will not take advantage of it.

Now, there’s no way, by moving an alliance that was originally designed to protect Western Europe from the aggression of the East, you move it to the East—how are you going to keep a Europe whole and free? If you have a Europe whole and free, Russia and all the others have to be part of the system.

So, later, not out of design, but simply, I think, largely because of domestic politics, and the East Europeans, who wanted protection against a threat that at that point didn’t exist, but it might in the future, we started expanding NATO.

The Russian reaction at first was not that negative, but then other things began to happen. After 9/11, then President Putin was the first foreign president to call President Bush and offer cooperation and support. And we got it, when we invaded Afghanistan. We got their vote in the UN. We got intelligence support and other support, logistics support, in getting there.

What did they get in return?

He also removed, without our request, a base, a listening station, in Cuba, and one in Cam Ranh Bay. We walk out of the ABM Treaty, which was the basis of all of our arms control treaties, and the one in which we could deal with each other as equals. We keep on expanding NATO, and not only expand it, we begin to talk about bases there, about deploying anti-ballistic missiles, for no good reason at all. Supposedly it was to defend the Europeans against the Iranians—the Iranians at that point didn’t have missiles that could attack them, nor was it apparent to many of us why the Iranians would ever want to attack the Europeans. What are they going to get out of that?

The Russian reaction was again to be increasingly hostile. And of course, we had the outburst in Munich, in 2006, by President Putin.

Now, there are a lot of explanations other than… We didn’t set out—I’ll make this clear—to stick it to Russia. I don’t think there was any intent. We had a lot of reasons, mainly domestic political reasons, to follow these courses. But, we were simply ignoring the Russian reaction, and the inevitable Russian reaction.

And so what we began to get was a reaction from what you could say was, at best, inconsiderate American actions, to a Russian over-reaction. And you know, when you set up these vibrations, they can be amplified. Small ones can get bigger and bigger and bigger. Cosmologists tell us, for example, that maybe all of the universe began with a single singularity, and you get these vibrations.

But the process was, that we developed an atmosphere, which, even before this Ukrainian crisis broke upon us, was one of alleged hostility, perceived hostility, I should say, between us. Something that we had when at the end of the Cold War, we had ended. And an attitude on both sides that we were facing each other not only as competitors, but adversaries, and that we were in, what you call a zero-sum game. Anything that the U.S. wanted, would be to Russia’s detriment. Anything that Russia wanted, is to the U.S. detriment.

That was precisely the attitude that we put an end to, to end the Cold War.

Just a couple of words about how we did it.

I was thinking back, when we got into all of this. Okay, you know, by the mid-80s, we were in one of the most intense confrontations with the Soviet Union. The Europeans at that point were talking about Cold War II; the rhetoric was high. And what was the attitude, and the policies, that we followed then in order to put an end to this?

And I pulled out something I had almost forgotten about. It was a memo that President Reagan wrote, in his own hand-writing, just before he met Gorbachov the first time. Simple language, but his insights into how you deal with, at that time, what’s our principal adversary. And I don’t have time actually to quote them—I have his words here—but there are four points there that I wanted to quote.

One was, he started out by saying, Gorbachov is going to be a tough negotiator, but I have to remember that he has to justify what he does to the Politburo back home. In other words, he’s not a dictator.

Second, he defined what he considered the three most important areas that we had to deal with. They were: arms control, our conflict in third areas, and the distrust between us. The distrust between us. And he understood, that until we worked on that, we weren’t going to solve the other.

Human rights? He said we’re much too upfront on human rights. We will get a lot of cheers from the bleachers by beating up on them on human rights, but it will not help the people involved. In fact, it could hurt them. And he went on to say, we’ve got to go private. It’s too important to confront them.

And he concluded this memo by saying, whatever we achieve, we must not consider it victory, because that will simply make the next achievement more difficult.

You have, in a nutshell, a description, I would say, of what, in the last 15 years at least, we have been doing the opposite. And I think what Reagan understood—he was not a specialist in a lot of these other things, he had people to work on that—what he understood was human relations. And he also understood, unlike many of the people on his staff, that the other side are made up also of human beings, with their own politics, their own requirements. And number one, you’ve got to deal with them with respect, and you’ve got to deal with them in a way that you don’t expect them to do something that is not in the true interest of their country.

So, our effort then was simply, that we needed to convince the Soviet leader—and in this case, eventually, Gorbachov—that their past policy was not serving their interests. And it was not!

Now one thing he never did—he called the system an Evil Empire once. People would never let him forget it. He also later said it wasn’t any more. But he never denigrated any Soviet leader by name. He would begin every conversation, whether it was a foreign minister, or the President—”we hold the peace of the world in our hands. We must cooperate.”

In other words, he met them as human beings, even though he disliked the system for very good reason. He dealt with them with respect.

Now, what do we see has happened? I can give you a lot of details when you ask questions about it, but obviously, we’re in an entirely different mode with Russia. And I would say it’s not just the President—in fact, the worst offender by far is the U.S. Congress. And what Russia has been reacting to what they consider insufferable arrogance and humiliation for several years.

Now, they may exaggerate a lot of that, but it has led to the fact that we seem to be operating off two entirely different, and both of them unfounded, narratives. The Russians feel that we are out, we intend to create a world empire, if not an empire, at least hegemony, and that our goal is to hem them in, to surround them, and to keep them as simply supplier of raw materials, and determine not to treat them as, you might say, equals. They know their economy is not on [24:25], they know they don’t have the military that we do, but is that we are supposed to respect when we deal with other people? Is there a gradation that the more powerful you are, the more right you are?

Our actions, in many cases, descend to that.

And obviously, this narrative picks up on some things that are half truths, some things that are other, some things that are exaggerated, misunderstandings — but, to them, this is a contest over what is their vital interest.

Now, the American narrative, of course, is quite different. It is that you have the recurrence in Russia of a autocratic system that has taken away the possibility of democracy from Russia, has turned it once again into an autocracy, and has begun to threaten its neighbors. Never mind that these neighbors were part of the country 30 years ago. And never mind that none of them fought for their independence. It was handed them.

But, you get these two narratives, and, of course, we’re reading opeds right now, to save the world system of peace, we must provide arms to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves, etc., etc., etc.

It seems to me that both of these narratives are wrong. Ours is based upon a total misunderstanding of the end of the Cold War! How many have heard we won the Cold War? You were defeated. How many have heard, the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union broke up? The fact is we negotiated an end to the Cold War, which was to the benefit of both countries. And the understanding then was, that we were creating a Europe whole and free, as I mentioned.

The breakup of the Soviet Union occurred over two years after the Cold War had ended, and it ended definitively. And it broke up because of internal pressures, and that breakup, that breakup was led by the elected leader of Russia.

Now, you have part of their narrative now. Because of our triumphalism, ah yes, they fooled Gorbachov. In fact, some would say the CIA hired him. He betrayed us, you see. They were after us all the time, they wanted to break up the Soviet Union, they’re responsible for breaking it up.

Totally the opposite of the truth. And yet, step after step, these narratives—both of which are wrong—at best exaggerated, but both have elements that are simply the opposite of the truth. And yet, both countries seem to be developing their policies on it.

Let me add another element now, which I find particularly disturbing, and that is the personalization of the whole relationship. It’s hard to read anything in most of our press that doesn’t attribute all the Russian actions to one man, and that man is usually characterized in the most unflattering terms, with various names. This is true both of the media, which, of course, can call things as they wish, but also of our officials quote. You know, it seemed to me that if you really want to settle the situation, you set up, in effect, a public duel between your President and other person, particularly when the other president has most of the marbles in the nation at issue.

When President Putin says we’re not going to allow the Ukrainian situation to be resolved by military means, he means it. And no amount of shouting about this is going to change that. And for the president of the United States to appear to challenge him to do other things, simply has a negative effect.

Now, I’m one who actually… I thought the President did a fine State of the Union address, as long as he was dealing with domestic issues. I know Congress is not going to approve it, but that’s going to be a good platform for whoever runs on the Democratic ticket in 2016. But his comments about President Putin, it seems to me, were totally out of place, and can only have a negative effect.

So, I think that one thing that we need to do, is to get this personal debate at the top of government out. We really have to stop that, because it’s got a negative effect! When you say, I’ve isolated him, he’s losing, look, you didn’t like what I was doing, but this guy’s losing—what’s his reaction? I’ll show you if I’m losing!

So, who wins from that sort of exchange?

But the biggest problem really hasn’t been the President. He’s been much better on many of these issues than Congress. And I would say one of the most outrageous things, that did much to create the atmosphere that we are in, which is one that nobody is going to benefit from, was the Magnitsky Act. Here you have the United States Congress, which in that year could not even pass a budget, passing a law about a court case in Moscow, where it was alleged that the lawyer was mistreated, and he died while he was in detention. That was potentially a real scandal in Moscow.

So, what does the U.S. Congress do? They pass legislation requiring the Administration to identify publicly, and take action, to deny visas to specific people who might have been involved. One of the things when I was amabassador in Moscow, I would talk about a lot, is how we really need to respect the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Here we have a case, in another jurisdiction—there may have been a scandal there, there may not have been—a law is passed, limited to Russia, by name, and when, I know, one Congressman was asked about it, he said, oh, it’s not about Russia, it’s about human rights.

If it’s not about Russia, why did you limit it to Russia? And I would point out, that was at a time when the United States had torturers and was not prosecuting them. Was that any concern to the American Congress? It was a time that, since then, we have learned that were several prisoners on death row who were proved to be innocent. And so on. It would seem to me that the U.S. Congress should pay a little more attention. And I would just say, on the whole human rights issue, I think we Americans have to understand: yes, human rights are important, very important. But you do not protect them by public pressure on another country, particularly when you are unwilling to judge yourself.

The State Department, now for decades, has to report on human rights in every country in the world, but one—want guess which one that is? [laughter] And what sends the Russians up the wall is the language we use, which we don’t understand how it’s [34.17 —understood?] outside. When we say, we are an exceptional people, we’re capable of doing good things, protecting other people, and so on—they read it as saying that the rules don’t apply to us, unless we want them to. And we act that way.

I’ll just make one more addition here, and then we can go to questions, and that is, it seems to me when I really looked at what our policies have been, which has—given their reaction, and this is not something the U.S. has created singlehandedly—what we have gotten has been action/reaction, insults followed by insults, answered and so on. So this process is one—I wonder, when I think about how the policy is made, I was wondering—how do you characterize this?

We’ve heard a lot recently about autism, and whether there’s any connection with vaccination and so on. And suddenly, I said, you know, we have an autistic foreign policy! Let me read you—I went back and looked at the actual definition of autism.

“Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior.”

When the Congress of the United States votes over 30 times in a legislation they know is never going to become law, I would say that is restricted and repetitive behavior, and the problem is really an autistic foreign policy.

Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 until November 2014, delivered a speech at King’s College London, in which he warned that “the Ukraine crisis is no longer just about Ukraine. It’s now a much bigger, more dangerous crisis, between Russia and Western countries, about values and order in Europe.”

Sawers, in his first public speech since retiring as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, specifically warned against provoking Russia, with its formidable nuclear arsenal, and endorsed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to restore calm in Ukraine.

Sawers thus joins with other voices in Europe (including Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine) and the United States (such as former diplomat and Russia expert Jack Matlock), in calling for sanity in dealing with Russia, to avoid the imminent danger of thermonuclear war.

According to press accounts in BBC and the Guardian, Sawers warned that if Western countries decide to “take on Moscow” by providing arms to Ukraine, then Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely respond.

“As long as Mr. Putin sees the issue in terms of Russia’s own security, he will be prepared to go further than us. So he would respond with further escalation on the ground. Perhaps with cyber attacks against us. We have thousands of deaths in Ukraine. We could start to get tens of thousands; then what?”

Sawers also warned against attempting regime change in Russia, arguing that any change in power in the Kremlin “may well be for the worse.” According to the Guardian, “Britain’s recently retired chief spymaster said Russia had a formidable nuclear arsenal and Putin wanted these ultimate weapons in his armoury to project raw strength. Russia may have rejected European values but, Sawers said, “we deal with the Russia we have, not the Russia we’d like to have.” Sawers said efforts by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to restore calm deserved the west’s full support. He added:

“Once we have calm—if we have calm—we’ll need a new approach to co-existence with President Putin’s Russia… Any foreseeable change of power in Russia may well be for the worse. Managing relations with Russia will be the defining problem in European security for years to come.”

The Guardian added that “Sawer’s remarks reflected the overwhelming view in Britain’s national security establishment which, with the exception of some former generals, is urging caution over Ukraine.”

In the wake of Lyndon LaRouche’s call to fire Victoria Nuland in order to stop her from using Ukraine to trigger World War III, a number of senior statesmen have begun to voice their profound concern that the world is on the brink of thermonuclear confrontation, and are warning that the consequences of a war with Russia could be the extermination of the human race. As senior U.S. diplomat Ambassador Chas Freeman warned in his introduction of Jack Matlock, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, during an appearance at the National Press Club this past Wednesday, “We are here to consider some very consequential and timely questions. What is the risk of war with Russia? What would be the consequences of such a war? Might it be nuclear?” Ambassador Matlock in turn stated, “I think the elephant in the room, which nobody is referring to, is the nuclear issue,” and went on to thoroughly refute the entire Obama-Nuland narrative of so-called Russian authoritarianism and aggression, warning that any escalation of the conflict in Ukraine could have devastating and existential consequences.

Even more stark was an op-ed published in RT yesterday by Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow and a signer of the Schiller Institute petition calling on the US and Europe to cooperate with the BRICS nations, and Martin Sieff, veteran foreign affairs correspondent and a senior fellow at the American University in Moscow, who warn that the Minsk agreements could represent “a brief, fragile window of opportunity for the world to step back from the brink of a nuclear confrontation that would destroy the entire northern hemisphere of the earth.” Citing senior statesmen such as Jack Matlock as exemplary of “a few wise men” who can induce the “drastic change in [american] foreign policy” which is urgently necessary “to revive the severed lines of communication between Washington and Moscow and start the process of bringing the world back from the brink of nuclear destruction,” they conclude by warning:

“It is not too late for the voices of reason and sanity to be heard. But the alarms on the Doomsday Clock are already ringing.”

And finally, Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 until November 2014, in his first public speech since retiring as head of the Secret Intelligence Service which he delivered at King’s College London, warned that “the Ukraine crisis is no longer just about Ukraine. It’s now a much bigger, more dangerous crisis, between Russia and Western countries,” specifically warning against provoking Russia, with what he called “its formidable nuclear arsenal.” Sawers cautioned against a strategy of “taking on Moscow” by providing lethal arms to Ukraine, as well as specifically warning against any attempts at regime change in Russia, calling instead for “a new approach to co-existence with president Putin’s Russia.”

These warnings represent voices of sanity from those in the West who recognize that nobody wins a thermonuclear war. However, only by removing Victoria Nuland from her position and neutralizing the Obama war policy can the “brief, fragile window of opportunity for the world to step back from the brink of nuclear confrontation” be seized. As Lyndon LaRouche stated on February 15:

“Now that Nuland’s Nazis have vowed to break the agreement that could represent the last genuine opportunity to halt the drive for war with Russia, there is only one sane option—fire Nuland and thoroughly expose and shut down her Nazi terrorists. Only by removing her from her position as one of Obama’s key agents promoting world war, can the drive for war be halted at this late date.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur told the U.S. Congress in 1951 that a third world war would mean human extinction, and that the solution to preventing such war “must be of the spirit, if we are to save the flesh.”

America and Europe have powerful options available to them, offered by the BRICS-allied nations, to avoid world war, through mutual economic and scientific progress, a change “of the spirit.”

But we are taking the opposite path.

The United States, from years under British prodding of overthrowing governments oriented to Russia or China, of forcing NATO closer and closer to Russia’s borders and trying to surround and contain China, now faces the imminent threat of a world war exploding out of the Ukraine crisis.

Two of the leading newspapers of Europe in succession have warned that we face nuclear war: First, Germany’s Der Spiegel on Feb. 9 reported the fears of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, former British Defense Secretary Des Browne that human survival is on thinner ice than during the Cold War, and now there is no “red telephone.” Then London’s Telegraph on Feb. 15 warned of the large number of political figures in Russia who think that nuclear war with the United States now cannot be avoided.

The threat is very real that as war with NATO comes ever closer to Russia, and NATO ballistic missile defenses erode its own deterrent, Russia may decide to pre-empt with thermonuclear weapons. Leading Russian figures have recently warned as much, repeatedly.

Any American leader who calls Russia “just a regional power,” as Barack Obama does, is acting insane.

And the German press revealed Feb. 15 that Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland denounced European efforts to negotiate a Ukraine ceasefire as “Moscow bulls–t,” and told American diplomats and Senators to “fight the Europeans” in order to continue the war and give Ukraine heavy arms.

Yet the vast majority of Americans simply look away from what is manifest to informed leaders across all of Eurasia: That humanity with all its incredible potentials, may be close to total destruction. Political figures here who warn of the thermonuclear war crisis are relegated to their own blogs or little-known websites, and Americans try to ignore them.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche has worked for 30 years to design and promote the economic development option of great projects of infrastructure, now adopted by China and the BRICS countries as “the new Silk Road,” and open to the United States.

But she warned today that the American population must rid itself of its sleepwalking illusions: We are closer to thermonuclear war than in the 1962 Cuban Missiles Crisis—but there is no discussion, no debate, no mobilization of human beings to stop it!

Americans are making the suicidal mistake of simply not discussing the threat to the nation’s, and their individual, existence. And thus not acting to seize the alternative.

On Feb. 14, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche addressed the Schiller Institute conference in New York City with the fullest possible description of this crisis, and what alternatives can be taken, fast, to end it.

As of today, Feb. 17, this crisis has become so severe that a passionate mobilization of all activists, against the threat of thermonuclear war, has to go beyond the “sleepwalking” efforts thus far. Forcing the firing of the Nazi-loving war-hawk Nuland would be an immediate turning point away from war. Breaking up Wall Street’s biggest banks would remove the most powerful impetus for war—the bankruptcy of the trans-Atlantic system. Irrational fears have to be replaced by rational fear, which strives with all its strength for the saving alternative of human progress and peace.

The Obama administration is currently implementing policies, on the economy generally and on Ukraine specifically, which have the planet careening towards a thermonuclear showdown between the United States and NATO, on one side, and Russia and China, on the other. This is tantamount to grounds for impeachment of Obama, Lyndon LaRouche stated today. Under British policy direction, Obama has placed the U.S. on a trajectory to war, and through the likes of the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, he has unleashed Nazis—true Nazis, with documented historic ties to Adolf Hitler—who are threatening the very existence of Russia. As Obama muses publicly about sending weapons to Ukraine, today’s Moscow Times headlined its report simply: “Russia Would See U.S. Moves to Arm Ukraine as Declaration of War.”

Behind such strategic blunders and provocations, is a distinctly flawed philosophy and way of thinking. For example, in their dealings with Russia, Obama and the British are totally wedded to utilitarian behavior modification, along the lines of Bentham’s felicific calculus. In his comments yesterday after meeting with Merkel, Obama again stressed that if Russia doesn’t cave in to his demands, the U.S. “can ratchet up the costs to Russia,” and will consider “what other means we can put in place to change Mr. Putin’s calculus.” Similarly, Ashton Carter, in written responses to Congress on his nomination as Secretary of Defense, not only argued for arming Ukraine, but for pressuring them on supposed INF Treaty violations:

“US responses must make clear to Russia that if it does not return to compliance, our responses will make them less secure than they are today.”

That is insane, LaRouche commented succinctly. And such insanity only increases the danger of war, since the Russians arenot going to respond the way behaviorists predict, because that is not the way the functional human mind actually operates. They will respond asymmetrically, creatively, based on a sense of human and national identity that has nothing to do with Bentham’s felicific calculus. Unlike animals, where the premises of behavior modification apply, Man’s mind functions from a distinct concept of a future-under-construction, and acts to change current parameters to ensure such a future is created—something no animal, or utilitarian, can do.

Operating otherwise, as the British inherently do, will truly lead to war by miscalculation—the biggest miscalculation of all, related to the nature of Man.

Our job, Lyndon LaRouche emphasized today, is not to describe this situation, but to specify what we must do to change it, immediately. And that is very simple. We must bankrupt Wall Street, LaRouche stated, because it and the whole trans-Atlantic financial system is hopelessly bankrupt, as we see clearly in the case of Greece. Any further attempt to keep it alive, will only blow up the nations of the trans-Atlantic region all the quicker, and all the more explosively. The fact is that Wall Street is bankrupt, and only idiots and fools—and those who fear them—believe otherwise.

They are obviously bankrupt, LaRouche continued. All the accounts show it; the rate of bankruptcy is accelerating; and efforts to paper it over with additional quantitative easing is particularly dangerous, because that will simply blow the whole system wide open in short order, and no one will survive.

So shut it down, LaRouche stated. Put it in receivership. And create a new institution, under federal control, to stabilize the situation, and create new federal guaranteed credit. Then set that new credit to work, to create rising productive powers of labor centered on high energy flux density projects.

Wall Street won’t like it. But 99.99% of the human race will. That is the only alternative to war, chaos and massive planetary depopulation.

HSBC, one of the largest British banks, whose history traces back to the 19th-Century Opium Wars, has been once again caught in the center of a major worldwide criminal enterprise. The scandal also throws new “Wall Street” light on a “deal” made between the Justice Department and HSBC in 2011, by Obama’s present nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch.

Last night, CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired a lengthy exposé of HSBC’s Swiss-based private banking unit, which has been caught helping clients from over 200 countries evade an estimated $120 billion in taxes, while also facilitating money laundering for drug traffickers and terrorists. The International Center for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) worked with CBS, Britain’s Guardian, BBC Panorama, and other news organizations for months assembling the material for the “60 Minutes” show, which will also be aired tonight on Britain’s “Panorama” investigative program.

The evidence against HSBC was provided in 2007 by an information technology employee of the bank’s Swiss branch, Hervé Falciani, who stole massive numbers of computerized bank records, which included detailed notes from private account managers on how money laundering and tax evasion structures were created to serve individual clients’ needs.

At the time of the fraud, Sir Peter (now Lord) Green was CEO of HSBC. And although the British Treasury had been provided this documentation of crime by 2010, it did less than nothing: Lord Green was made Minister of Trade in the Cameron government in 2011, and remains in that position.

All told, 30,000 accounts were created at the Swiss branch of HSBC to evade taxes and facilitate other financial crimes. Falciani turned over the computer data to French authorities in 2008 and they shared the data with American and British law enforcement agencies, among others.

The revelations on “60 Minutes” have provoked strong reactions from some Members of Congress, with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Oh.) vowing to fully investigate. In 2012, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, published a 300-page report, detailing HSBC’s central role in laundering Mexican and Colombian drug money between Mexico City and New York branches of the bank. The same report detailed HSBC’s role in laundering terrorist funds, in league with Saudi banks, and in bypassing sanctions against Iran.

At the time of the report’s publication, Sen. Levin suggested that HSBC could have its charter to do business in the U.S. revoked, thus shutting down the money laundering route. Instead, however, the Department of Justice negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement with the bank, fining them $1.9 billion, but deferring prosection of any bank executives. In the “60 Minutes” broadcast, Jack Blum, an expert on bank money laundering who worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UN, assailed the failure to prosecute HSBC, and described the $1.9 billion fine as the equivalent of a traffic ticket for the bank, given the enormous profits HSBC realized through the criminal activity. At the time of the deferred prosecution deal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also decried the DOJ sweetheart deal.

The Justice Department official who cut the deal with HSBC is Loretta Lynch. The new revelations indicate that the DOJ, at the time of the 2012 deal over Senator Levin’s report, also had the evidence of HSBC’s tax evasion and Swiss money laundering operations. That raises the question of coverup of the bank’s criminal operations.

The contrast could not be more sharp with Argentina, much maligned by Wall Street’s friends. Argentina on Aug. 13, 2014 charged HSBC with being a “criminal enterprise,” and on Sept. 10, 2014, filed criminal charges against executives of the bank in Buenos Aires, for money-laundering and aggravated tax evasion.

HSBC, formerly the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, was a central target of EIR‘s bestseller Dope, Inc. and EIR intervened to attempt to block HSBC from being given its original toehold in the U.S. banking system in the late 1970s, when they attempted to take over Marine Midland Bank of New York. Although the New York State Banking Commissioner did block the transaction, the Federal Reserve granted Marine Midland a Federal bank charter and allowed the takeover to go forward.

Over the weekend, one outlet for British Imperial policy after another issued hysterical warnings about the global strategic implications of the Greek crisis. The CFR’s Ian Bremmer warned that Greece could well leave the Eurozone and NATO, and instead join the SCO, Russia and China in alternate economic and strategic arrangements – de facto joining the BRICS, although Bremmer doesn’t dare call it that. Daily Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that the EU chicken game with Greece could totally backfire, leading to “unknown tremors [which] might hit the global payments system. They are playing with fire.” And even the usually sensible Liam Halligan exploded that the new Syriza government in Greece “could take direct control of Greek lenders and write off billions of euros in household loans, destroying bank balance sheets in a frenzy of populist contractual vandalism.”

“But that is sensible; it is exactly what they should do,” Lyndon LaRouche commented today. They should just get rid of these phony debts which don’t exist anyway, LaRouche added. Not just Greece, but all of Europe and the entire trans-Atlantic sector has had debt shoved down their throats which is phony. The entire system is dead, LaRouche stated, in the U.S. as elsewhere, and it simply has to be replaced. Wall Street is dead, so write them off. The entire speculative system centered in the British Empire is dead, and trying to postpone that death won’t work anymore. Efforts to do that, will only lead to war, LaRouche added.

So we have to write off the speculative debt, which has no substance whatsoever, and is only speculation on a future which has already died, LaRouche stated. In its place, we have to create a new credit system under which we can operate, once the old system has been written off. That new system will give fresh authority for the generation of productive credit, as such principles were established by Alexander Hamilton, credit which will be used to generate productive employment.

No other conversation on these matters is worth it, LaRouche concluded. Wall Street, the British banks, and the European system are all dead. So get rid of them. It’s that simple.

In further discussions with associates this afternoon, LaRouche stressed:

Over the weekend, one outlet for British Imperial policy after another issued hysterical warnings about the global strategic implications of the Greek crisis. The CFR’s Ian Bremmer warned that Greece could well leave the Eurozone and NATO, and instead join the SCO, Russia and China in alternate economic and strategic arrangements – de facto joining the BRICS, although Bremmer doesn’t dare call it that. Daily Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that the EU chicken game with Greece could totally backfire, leading to “unknown tremors [which] might hit the global payments system. They are playing with fire.” And even the usually sensible Liam Halligan exploded that the new Syriza government in Greece “could take direct control of Greek lenders and write off billions of euros in household loans, destroying bank balance sheets in a frenzy of populist contractual vandalism.”

“But that is sensible; it is exactly what they should do,” Lyndon LaRouche commented today. They should just get rid of these phony debts which don’t exist anyway, LaRouche added. Not just Greece, but all of Europe and the entire trans-Atlantic sector has had debt shoved down their throats which is phony. The entire system is dead, LaRouche stated, in the U.S. as elsewhere, and it simply has to be replaced. Wall Street is dead, so write them off. The entire speculative system centered in the British Empire is dead, and trying to postpone that death won’t work anymore. Efforts to do that, will only lead to war, LaRouche added.

So we have to write off the speculative debt, which has no substance whatsoever, and is only speculation on a future which has already died, LaRouche stated. In its place, we have to create a new credit system under which we can operate, once the old system has been written off. That new system will give fresh authority for the generation of productive credit, as such principles were established by Alexander Hamilton, credit which will be used to generate productive employment.

No other conversation on these matters is worth it, LaRouche concluded. Wall Street, the British banks, and the European system are all dead. So get rid of them. It’s that simple.

One of Denmark’s major dailies, Jyllands-Posten, covered the Jan. 7 press conference of Rep. Walter Jones and Rep. Stephen Lynch to force President Obama to declassify the 28-page chapter of the Joint Congressional Inquiry report on the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the 9/11 hijackers, in the course of an interview in its Jan. 27 issue with Dearborn, Michigan Imam Mohammad Elahi.  Imam Elahi’s House of Wisdom mosque hosted Dearborn’s interfaith celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday this year.

Without extremist religious ammunition and lots of money from Saudi Arabia, it would be relatively easy to defeat the Islamist terrorism, Elahi, an Iranian Shi’ite who immigrated to Michigan in 1992, told Jyllands-Posten. 

“The Wahhabi ideology of Saudi Arabia has created the roots of much of the terrorism that we see today.  Take, for example beheadings committed by groups like Islamic State and al-Nusra Front. They are clearly inspired and ideologically influenced by the traditions of Saudi Arabia… I agree that there is a great need to reform Islam. Some of the materials used in teaching in Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis are exporting to schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan and several African countries, are directly dangerous because it only spreads hatred and discord.  Of course you can’t change the text of the Koran itself, but you can reform the understanding and interpretation of it.”

He was not shy in his criticism of Washington’s collaboration with the Saudis: 

“It is a problem that the United States in the fight against IS cooperates with those who fund the Islamists. There are not that many warriors of the Islamic State, when it comes down to it, so if you stop sending money and weapons, they will be finished in a short time.  If the world really wanted to stop them, it would happen quite quickly.”

Under the subhead “Saudi Arabia’s Role in 9/11,” Jyllands-Posten describes:

“Politicians in Congress have long demanded greater pressure from the White House to stop the flow of money from the oil state to the religious extremists, and in these days a group of American politicians from both parties is trying to press President Obama to publish the 28 pages from a [2002] report on the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11, 2001.  The 28 pages are about Saudi Arabia’s role and were classified top secret by then-President George W. Bush.

“Republican Walter Jones from Georgia and Democrat Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts are among the few politicians who have read the report, describing it as shocking.  It was known that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but now politicians suggest that the White House is concealing the fact that the Saudi government both knew the plans and helped to finance the attack.”

If the volume of condolences for the death of Saudi King Abdullah meant anything, one could easily believe the world had lost a great leader, writes James Carden, a former member of the State Department’s U.S.-Russia Bilateral Commission, citing the fulsome praise of Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Carden’s article was published in the Jan. 27 The American Conservative.

Carden then cuts to the chase and reports that, beyond the Saudis’ obscene brutalities,

“There is Saudi Arabia’s role in providing material support for the 9/11 atrocity that took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans. Obama continues to protect the Saudis by refusing to release the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report having to do with Saudi Arabia’s funding of and complicity in the attacks. This despite his own promises to the 9/11 families that he would do so. Efforts by U.S. Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) to force the administration to release the redacted pages are ongoing.  In addition, former Senator and Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) has also called on the administration to release the 28 redacted pages, whose content, he says, ‘points a finger in the direction of Saudi Arabia.’

“Meanwhile, the Saudis continue to fund—to the tune of billions of dollars a year—the propagation of the most sinister and violent branch of Islam throughout the world, leading to, among other things, the ritual slaughter of a staff of cartoonists in the very heart of Europe, hostage taking in Sydney, and murderous rampages in Ottawa and Brussels, to say nothing of a series of subway bombings in Madrid, London, and Moscow.

“It is by now blindingly clear that the regime in Riyadh will resort to the most medieval of measures towards anyone within or without its borders who is not in thrall to the violent tenets of Wahhabi Islam.  So the question remains: why does our own government pretend that this is not so?

“The expression of even a modicum of sorrow, even if disingenuous, by Western leaders is far more than the death of King Abdullah deserves.”

In Congress, moves to declassify the 28 pages continue. Yesterday, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) announced that he has again requested permission to read the classified 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11.  Grayson’s December 2014 request was denied by former Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, an unprecedented action.  There are currently five cosponors to Rep. Walter Jones’ H. Res. 14, demanding the declassification of the 28 pages:  Reps. John  Conyers, (D-MI), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL).

After lecturing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the need for religious tolerance, U.S. President Obama left India a day early to rush to Saudi Arabia to pay respects to deceased Saudi King Abdullah, with an extraordinary U.S. delegation of no fewer than 27 dignitaries.        

The Obama delegation arrived just after the new Saudi King Salman had refused to intervene to stop a scheduled beheading. Four public beheadings have already occurred under his brief reign.        

The high level of Saudi such power over the Obama Administration was laid bare in a Jan. 7, 2015 press conference by former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, U.S. Congressmen Walter Jones (D-NC), and Stephen Lynch (D-MA), with the 9/11 families. The congressmen demanded that the final chapter of the 2001 Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 be declassified.  Former Sen. Graham (D-FL), Co-chair of that Inquiry, told press that the classified 28 pages reveal the Saudis as the funders of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.  Yet although Obama has twice promised the 9/11 victims’ families that he would declassify these 28 pages, he has never done so.        

The extraordinary delegation mustered to accompany Obama and the First Lady to Saudi Arabia spotlights the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.  It included: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was scheduled to lead a retreat of Democratic congressional members now ongoing in Philadephia; Secretary of State John Kerry; CIA Director John Brennan; Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); and General Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command in the region.  The Guardian reported that:

“To emphasize the permanence of Washington’s links to the House of Saud, Obama’s delegation also pointedly included key officials from past Administrations, such as former Secretaries of State James Baker and Condolezzaa Rice, and former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger.”

This delegation shows that something is indeed rotten in Washington and Saudi Arabia.

Full video and transcript of January 7, 2015 press conference on Capitol Hill featuring former Senator Bob Graham, Representative Walter Jones, Representative Stephen Lynch, and members of the 9/11 families including Terry Strada, national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. The press conference, which was live streamed on the LaRouche PAC website, was convened to announce the filing of H. Res. 14 to declassify the excised 28 page chapter of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry Report which details foreign state sponsorship and financial support of the 9/11 hijackers, and was very well attended by leading national press services, including CNN, Fox News, US News and World Report, Newsweek, Daily Beast, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, National Review, and numerous others, in addition to numerous independent websites and blogs related to citizen activism on declassification such as www.28pages.org.

Press Conference to Declassify the 28 Pages of 9/11 Joint Inquiry Report

Former Sen. Bob Graham, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. Stephen Lynch, 9/11 Families representatives Terry Strada, Sylvia Carver, and Abraham Scott

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

REP. WALTER JONES: If I could get your attention, I would like to tell you that we are very grateful that you would attend this press conference today. We’ve got the gentleman that has been leading this battle for twelve years, Senator Bob Graham, will be speaking as well.

Let me tell you the order of the talk today: I’ll make brief comments after I welcome you, which I’m doing now. Then I will introduce Stephen Lynch from Massachusetts, who joined me last year in a House Resolution that we put in, to call on the White House to declassify these 28 pages. He and I dropped the same resolution yesterday, but we don’t have a bill number yet, because so many bills were introduced. [The number of the resolution is H. Res. 14 — ed.]

Then we have from the families, who have suffered so much pain, Terry Strada, Sylvia Carver, and Abraham Scott. And then after they speak, we will then take questions from the press. At that time, please identify who you are and who you are with.

First, my brief comments will be that just like the tragedy in France today, no nation can defend itself unless the nation knows the truth, and especially when there’s been an attack like 9/11. [The satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was attacked by three gunmen who killed 12 people and wounded 5 in Paris—ed.] The families and their pain is something none of us can experience, unless we’re one of the 9/11 families. So with that, I want to introduce Stephen Lynch, and then will come back and introduce Sen. Bob Graham, and then the family members will speak, and then you’ll have your chance to ask questions.

Stephen Lynch and I bonded as friends long before this issue of the 28 pages. I am a conservative Republican from North Carolina; he is more —

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH: Moderate.

JONES: Moderate, from Massachusetts, and a Democrat. And we became friends just because I think God intended that we would be friends, quite frankly. So with that, again, Stephen and Thomas Massie, who cannot be with us today, is also on this House Resolution calling on the Administration to declassify the 28 pages. So I will let Stephen speak now, and then I will come back and introduce Sen. Bob Graham.

Stephen, come ahead and tell the people why we need to declassify the 28 pages.

REP. LYNCH: Thank you very much, Walter, for that very generous and kind introduction. First of all, I want to thank the 9/11 families for being with us this morning. They are really the reason we are here. And we’re introducing our measure, resolution, from last year, to require the declassification of the 28-page section of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into intelligence activities before and after the terrorist attacks of September of 2001. Congressman Jones and I jointly introduced this resolution back in December of 2013, and we are pleased to do so again.

I’d like to begin by thanking my colleague Walter Jones for his leadership on this issue. He has been relentless, which I think is what it’s going to take to get these pages declassified. And he’s really provided, I think, a dignified and well-thought-out approach for the reasons behind our request. I’d also like to acknowledge Sen. Bob Graham, again, who was a catalyst for this effort, and really, I think, before anyone, recognized the rightness of disclosing these 28 pages when the Joint Report first came out, and making these public.

There are three basic reasons for our request here: First is that transparency is a good aspect of democracy and that, as Walter indicated, having an informed public, from the beginning of our government has always been a major priority and an asset of democracy; and we believe that transparency in this case will not only be the right thing to do, but secondly, it will provide justice for a lot of the families—for all of the families who are affected directly. We all suffered a deep and personal, profound loss, but these families, who will speak later on at this conference, will speak to the true pain that they feel each and every day. And they are deserving of the truth, just as the American people are. And thirdly, I think, after reading the 28 pages — and the pages speak for themselves — I think that members of the Congress and American citizens everywhere, will be better informed, in terms of our national security posture and the threats that are out there, I think they will be better informed, more thoughtful, more comprehensive, and we will understand more fully, the nature of the threat that’s out there. And I think that, again, is one more reason to make sure that these reports are made public.

So, with that, I just want to say, again, we are deeply grateful that Senator Graham was able to join us today. He has provided much impetus for this investigation here, it’s kept us going. As I said before, he was the first one to recognize the wrongfulness in terms of concealing this from the American public.

And, it’s one important point I want to emphasize, is that we frequently see reports—I’m in the process of reading a 6,700-page report on the CIA enhanced interrogation process—and it is typical to see a redaction where a couple lines or a name, name of a country, name of a CIA agent might be deleted for the purpose of protecting that individual. But in this case, this report, this Joint Report, 28 pages were excised, a whole section of it! That’s extraordinary. And it points to the need for disclosing that information, in order to make sure that that report is fully understood. I think Walter and I, and the Senator, agree that this is very important information to have out there, and that we jointly feel, as well as Representative Massie, that this presents no risks to sources, or individuals in terms of disclosing this, for our intelligence apparatus; we feel, on the other hand, this will make us stronger, make our country stronger, and better prepared and better informed, if we disclose this information, as we rightly should.

So with that, I’m going to turn this back over to Walter Jones, so that he can introduce the esteemed Senator. Thank you.

REP. JONES: I want to, after I make my comments about Senator Graham, I’d like for Terry Strada to come first, Sylvia Carver to come second, and then Abraham Scott, third. And then if you would stand here, or if you need to sit, sit, so that when we get to the questions—.

I want to remind you, that after this report came out it was the Bush Administration that determined that these 28 pages should be classified; and as Stephen said, we’ve read the report, and there’s nothing about national security. I’m going to let Senator Graham speak in detail about his concern about why this has not been released, then remind you that Sen. Bob Graham spent 18 years in the Senate: He’s a man that has the nation’s respect, for the type of person that he is. He and Senator [richard] Shelby released the Joint Inquiry Report into 9/11 in December of 2002. Again, the report goes to the White House for final review, the White House, at that time under George Bush, decided that the 28 pages should be classified.

The families have suffered long enough. The American people have been denied the truth long enough. It is time for the truth to come out. As Stephen said, I want to thank Sen. Bob Graham. He has a daughter who was sworn in to the United States House of Representatives yesterday, and congratulations on that Senator. With that, a man who has driven this issue, since 2002, I’m not even going to begin to tell you what he has done! From court action, to other types of action, because he knows that the truth will set America free!

So with that, I introduce the esteemed, Senator from Florida, Bob Graham. Thank you. [applause]

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Walter, thank you very much.

Thank you, very much. And I, too, want to thank Walter and Steve—Congressmen Jones and Lynch—for their leadership in bringing this matter to the attention of the Congress. I want to thank the family members, who have been without question the most influential force in all of the changes that have occurred as a result of 9/11, and will be the most significant force in terms of convincing the President that it is time to give the American people the truth.

Needless to say, my remarks that I will espouse this morning, are considerably different than they would have been, but for events in Paris this morning, which in my judgment bring this matter into its proper focus.

But first a little background: After 9/11, it was clear that the Congress was going to be called upon to conduct some form of an inquiry as to what happened. The decision by the leadership, was to combine the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate into a single body; for the first time in the history of the Congress that that had occurred, for purposes of carrying out this Inquiry. The Inquiry took the year of 2002. It included hundreds of witnesses, tens of thousands of pages of documentation, leading up to an over-800-page report which was submitted in December of 2002. Some six months later, the declassified version emerged, and we were shocked to see that an important chapter in the report had not been redacted, that is, as Congressman Lynch and Congressman Jones said, a word or a phrase here or there, but an entire chapter.

Since that chapter continues to be classified, none of us can talk about it in public, but I think it’s fair to say that it is a central chapter, in terms of understanding, who was the support network that allowed 9/11 to occur. When we saw that this chapter had been eliminated, there was an immediate outcry. Sen. Dick Shelby, Republican from Alabama, who had been the chair and was at that time was the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I, issued a statement to the effect that we were intimately familiar with that chapter, we considered it to have no adverse effect on national security, that it was important to the overall understanding of 9/11 and it should be released.

We have subsequently been joined in that by others who were involved, including the chairman of the House Committee, Porter Goss, who wishes that he could have been here today to participate, as well, and subsequently, the citizen 9/11 Commission’s two co-chairs, Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean, have also advocated that these 28 pages be released.

Shortly after the declassification process ended, a letter was prepared, signed by almost half of the membership of the United States Senate, bipartisan, including, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Senator [hillary] Clinton of New York, all calling upon President Bush to release the 28 pages.

What have been the consequences of this refusal to release the pages? And let me say, while the 28 pages are maybe the most important and the most prominent, they are by no means the only example of where information that is important to understanding the full extent of 9/11 have also been withheld from the American people. So the comments I’m going to make are specifically about the 28 pages, but more generally about a pattern of cover-up, that for 12 years, has kept the American people from a full understanding, of the most horrific attack against the United States in its history.

The consequences, in my judgment are three:

One, is a denial of the truth. A core question in 9/11 is, did these 19 people act alone, or did they have a network of support which facilitated their ability to carry out a very complex plot. No one who has looked closely at the facts, including the individuals that I just named, has come to a conclusion other than that it is highly improbable that the 19 people could have acted alone. Yet, the official position of the United States government has been that they did act alone, and that there is no necessity for further inquiry into the question of whether there was a support network.

We’re now in the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, and we’ve had a national history classroom over the past few years, as incidents that were consistent with a date in the current era coincided with a date during that war. One of the pieces of information that we have learned, at least I have learned, is that President Lincoln had a policy throughout the war, that every message that came into the government, specifically into the State Department, was a matter of public record, on a daily basis. His feeling was that if the support of the American people was going to be maintained, in a war which was increasingly bloody, many loss of lives and loss of treasure, that it took the confidence of the American people, that their government was conducting itself in an appropriate manner, and that the key to that confidence was disclosure.

I wish we applied the Lincolnesque standard to what happened in 9/11.

The second issue, is the issue of justice. Some 3,000 members of the families who were lost on 9/11 have been trying for years to get justice through our system for the losses that they have suffered. The position of the United States government has been to protect Saudi Arabia, at virtually every step of the judicial process. When the United States government was called upon to take a position, it has been a position adverse to the interests of the United States citizens seeking justice, and protective of the government which, in my judgment, was the most responsible for that network of support.

Again, an example from the Civil War: The British had signed a neutrality agreement with the United States that they would not be involved in the Civil War. It was found out, subsequently, that in fact, their shipyards had been building military vessels for the Confederacy. After the war ended, the United States didn’t forget; it did not walk away from the negative effects of Britain’s perfidy. Rather, it pursued it, and finally, secured a recognition of what the British had done, and some compensation for the consequences of their actions. What a difference between the way this country saw itself as a prideful defender of justice for its citizens, and what we are experiencing today.

The third consequence is the issue of national security, and frequently those who have defended nondisclosure, have said, this cannot be made available to the American people, because it would be adverse to our national security. It will affect methods and sources of information, or other information that is inappropriate to be made publicly known. As the two Congressmen have just said, they both read the report — not 12 years ago, as I participated in writing the report — but they have read it recently, and have both come to the same conclusion that we did, a dozen years ago, that there is no threat to national security in disclosure.

I’m going to make the case today, that there’s a threat to national security by non-disclosure, and we saw another chapter of that, today, in Paris.

Here are some facts:

The Saudis know what they did. They are not persons who are unaware of the consequences of their government’s actions. Second, the Saudis know that we know what they did! Somebody in the Federal government has read these 28 pages, someone in the Federal government has read all the other documents that have been covered up so far. And the Saudis know that.

What would you think the Saudis’ position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observed that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known? What would the Saudi government do in that circumstance, which is precisely where they have been, for more than a decade?

Well, one, they have continued, maybe accelerated their support for one of the most extreme forms of Islam, Wahhabism, throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East. And second, they have supported their religious fervor, with financial and other forms of support, of the institutions which were going to carry out those extreme forms of Islam. Those institutions have included mosques, madrassas, and military. Al-Qaeda was a creature of Saudi Arabia; the regional groups such as al-Shabaab have been largely creatures of Saudi Arabia; and now, ISIS is the latest creature!

Yes, I hope and I trust that the United States will crush ISIS, but if we think that is the definition of victory, we are being very naive! ISIS is a consequence, not a cause—it is a consequence of the spread of extremism, largely by Saudi Arabia, and if it is crushed, there will be another institution established, financed, supported, to carry on the cause.

So the consequences of our passivity to Saudi Arabia, have been that we have tolerated this succession of institutions, violent, extreme, extremely hurtful to the region of the Middle East, and a threat to the world, as we saw this morning in Paris.

So I conclude by saying, this is a very important issue. It may seem stale to some, but it is as current as the headlines that we will read today. It is an issue that goes to the core of the United States’ contract with its people, that the people would give the government the credibility and support to govern; the government would give the people the information upon which they can make good judgments, as to the appropriateness of governmental action. It’s as fundamental as justice to our people, who have suffered so, by this evil union of extremism and a very powerful nation-state. And it is the security of the people of the United States of America.

So, I again thank the Congressmen for their leadership. I hope that they will soon be joined by a rising tide of other members of Congress who recognize the importance of this issue. And then, finally, that the President of the United States will declare that he is going to adopt the Lincolnesque standard of full disclosure, and rely on the intelligence and judgment and patriotism of the American people to decide what the appropriate course of action should be.

Thank you. [applause]

TERRY STRADA: Hello, everyone. My name is Terry Strada. I am the national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. I stand here today, united with members of the U.S. Congress and my fellow 9/11 family members and survivors, seeking truth, accountability, and justice for all those that we lost and loved.

We all know al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden attacked us on 9/11, but that is only half the truth. We believe the other half lies in the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Inquiry.

9/11 was an attack of unquantifiable loss, death, and destruction. Over 13 years ago, I never could have imagined my life, the lives of my three children, and the lives of my late husband Tom’s family, could be destroyed and torn apart by terrorists. I could not fathom that our country could be attacked by radical Islamists who have pledged, repeatedly, and remorselessly, to perpetuate heinous war crimes against innocent men, women, and children on American soil.

Incredibly, this is the world we live in. And private citizens, and Congress, must take action against those who are responsible for aiding and abetting the 19 hijackers that murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people on American soil, no matter who they may be, no matter what government they are, or no matter what country they come from.

Terrorism is pure evil, and so are its planners, ideologies, and their bankrollers. Money is the lifeblood of terrorism, and we must implore our government officials, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and our President, to get tough on terrorism financing. To hold accountable those who funded 9/11 and continue to fund al-Qaeda, ISIS, and countless other terrorist organizations, that remain dedicated to plotting future terrorist attacks against our nation.

When former President George W. Bush classified the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry, he effectively protected the people who gave financial and logistical aid to at least some of the 19 hijackers, while they were here in this country. He effectively denied the 9/11 victims and survivors, and the American people, the truth about who was behind the worst attack on American soil. By hiding the truth about who financed 9/11, the guilty parties have gone unpunished, free to continue financing terrorist organizations, and, as a consequence, we have witnessed the creation of branches of al-Qaeda, like ISIS, grow at an alarming rate.

It has long been reported the subjects of the redacted 28 pages point the finger at Saudi Arabia, who have given billions of dollars to promote Wahhabi Islam, the very ideology that spawned those terrorist organizations and define the jihadists’ agendas. Tragically, when those countries have become imperilled by the very monsters they help to create, they have turned to the United States to protect them, as is the case now with ISIS. We are once again engaged in conflicts against an amoral enemy, because we did nothing to prevent the funding of these organizations 13 years ago.

This cycle must stop. We must recognize and expose that our true enemy includes the backroom bankrollers, who repeatedly enable the frontline terrorists, who kill themselves, and never act again. We must declassify the 28 pages, expose the bankrolling enablers, and take action against them, or we will continue to face future waves of willing, frontline terrorists.

Since my husband was murdered, all I have ever wanted is justice. The thousands of victims’ families and survivors I represent, also want justice for the murder of their loved ones, and the pain and suffering inflicted on us. When the Twin Towers imploded, our loved ones were literally torn to pieces, and flung from river to river, on the streets and on the rooftops of Lower Manhattan. Just as was done at the Pentagon and in the tragic, yet heroic crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They were returned to us in pieces spanning years, or, for families like mine, they never came home to a final resting place at all.

We want the truth, and to hold accountable those who supported the 19 hijackers and enabled al-Qaeda.

I’m going to repeat myself here. We want justice. We want accountability. We want the truth.

To achieve the truth, we must declassify the redacted 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry Report.

As you’ve heard here today, there is no threat to national security to release these 28 pages. So, therefore, there is no reason to keep them classified.

To achieve justice and accountability, we must pass the Justice Against the Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). This is a bill that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without objection on Sept. 11, 2014, and voted out of the Senate in December with unanimous consent. This legislation will clarify existing law, and enable the victims of terrorism to exercise their right to hold accountable those guilty of giving financial aid and logistical support to terrorists who carry out heinous acts of murder, death, and destruction here on American soil, and help us achieve the justice we deserve.

Where is the outrage? I want to know; that Saudi Arabia, a country, our supposed ally, not only bankrolled al-Qaeda, and the worst terrorist attack on American soil, but was also instrumental in implementing an intricate web of operatives in numerous places around the world, including right here in our own country, to carry out a complex plan of bringing the 19 hijackers here to America. To name a few places: Sarasota, Florida; San Diego, California; Herndon, Virginia; Paterson, New Jersey.

Where is the outrage, that they continue to fund terrorist organizations like ISIS, which is killing, raping, and beheading innocent people at a rapacious rate, while at the same time recruiting from here in the West for more new members? And where is the indignation, that 9/11 victims’ families and survivors have been denied the right to hold accountable in a United States court room, the people responsible for the incineration of nearly 3,000 people?

We need the 114th Congress to direct President Obama to release, declassify, the redacted 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry, and we also need the 114th Congress to act swiftly, and pass JASTA into law. Our national security depends on this.

Thank you. [applause]

SYLVIA CARVER: Good morning. My name is Sylvia Carver. I’m here to speak on behalf of my sister Sharon Ann Carver, who was murdered at the Pentagon on 9/ll, as well as the other family members. My statement will be brief.

I want to make a personal request to the President of the United States to please, please, declassify the 28 pages. The families have the right to know the full story. They have a right to seek justice for their loved ones. They have a right to closure, and we cannot have that closure without the full answer, the full story. The full 28 pages must be released, so my family can have closure as well as all the other 9/11 families.

Thank you very much.

ABRAHAM SCOTT: Good morning. My name is Abraham Scott. I’m a retired Army officer. I lost my wife, Janice Marie Scott, in the Pentagon, along with the Carver sister. They were in an office—there were over 40 members of that organization that were killed that day—and I stand before you in full support of the initiative of declassifying of the 28 pages, as well as passing JASTA. And thank you, and God bless.

REP. JONES: Let me make one quick comment, and then we’re going to take questions. You can ask anyone. I wanted the families who have suffered so badly, who just spoke, to be on one side, so you can see them, and take the picture. Any of you from the press, make sure you get this picture of pain. That’s all I ask you to do.

This resolution that we have put in to call on the President, to do what is right for the American people and the 9/11 families. Senator Graham being here is just absolutely, just absolutely what we need to get the Senate to join us with a companion resolution, in the Senate, and to hold a news conference, and let’s put the pressure on the President. I do not know why, after I read these 28 pages, why there’s anyone who is reluctant to release the 28 pages. Steven Lynch and I—and I have a copy of this letter if you want it before you leave today—wrote the President in April, asking him to declassify the information. He’s told the families on two separate occasions, I will declassify the 28 pages. That’s been in the press!

We wrote him a letter in April, asking him to please declassify the information. Today, we have not received a response. We have called the White House numerous times. They’ve been responsive to this point: “We’re working on a response. We’ve got to let different agencies look at the response.”

It is time that the Senate joined the House, and joined the wishes of the American people, and the wishes of the 9/11 families.

If you’d like to ask questions, please just say who you are, and which person you’d like to come up, and we’ll be glad to answer your questions.

I’ll go here; who’d you like to ask?

JEFF STEINBERG: Senator Graham. Jeff Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review.

Senator, you mentioned that beyond the 28 pages, there are other materials that have been withheld. I know that there’s a situation right now before a Federal court in Florida, and I wonder if you’d say something about that, because I think it’s indicative of the idea that this was not something localized to only the issues raised in the 28 pages, involving San Diego, but this is a whole other dimension that really is suggestive of the magnitude of what needs to be told to the American people.

SEN. GRAHAM: Let me just briefly tell the story of Sarasota.

It was not until almost 10 years after 9/11 that we became aware that there was a prominent Saudi family, one member of whom had been an advisor to the Royal family, living in Sarasota. There were also three of the hijackers had done their flight training, at a small school near Sarasota. And during the period that those three were living there, they had extensive contacts with that Saudi family.

Less than two weeks before 9/11, under what law enforcement described as “urgent conditions,” the Saudi family left Sarasota, and returned to Saudi Arabia, raising the question, did someone tip them off that there was an event about to occur, and it would be better that they not be in the United States?

Through a press group in Florida, we’ve been trying to get released the FBI investigation that occurred, which probed the role of the family, and the hijackers.

The FBI initially said, they could not respond to our Freedom of Information request because there was nothing to respond with. There were no documents relative to the investigative.

Fortunately, there was a strong Federal judge, who would not accept that as truth. And he and the plaintiffs pursued, and today, 80,000 pages have been turned over by the FBI to that Federal judge, in the face of their original statement that there was no information, and that judge has, for the past several months, been reviewing the 80,000 pages, in order to make a judgment as to which of those warrant continued classification, and which can be released to the public.

I cite that as an example of the fact that this is not a narrow issue of withholding information at one place, in one time. This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, by all of the agencies of the Federal government, which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.

Q: Fox News, Washington. I realize the importance of releasing these in terms of giving the families closure, and the more principled fact that the 28 page be released so that the American public will know, but I sense that your persistence about this suggests that maybe there’s more. Do you think that it would impact foreign policy, or changes in national security at all, what’s in the details of these 28 pages?

REP. JONES: I will respond. My answer would be “no.” I do not understand how you can have a strong foreign policy when you are trying to hide the truth from the American people. How can your policymakers make foreign policy? That, to me, Joe, is just not fair. Because as Senator Graham has said, through the history of America, going back to his point of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, that America’s strength is the truth. And No, I do not think this would have any negative effect, I mean, to our foreign policy at all! I think it would strengthen our ability to have a sound foreign policy, that would be good for the American people.

I don’t know if anyone — Stephen, or Senator Graham wants to speak to that.

Yes, sir.

Q: Patrick Terpstra with the Cox Media Group. I guess for Senator Graham: Since we have not seen the 28 pages and I know you can’t give us all that’s in there, of course because it’s classified, but can you give us as much information as precisely as you can, as to exactly what it says about the Saudi involves in 9/11?

SEN. GRAHAM: The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier. The two congressmen have read the report much more recently than I and if they have any further comments…

REP. LYNCH: I think we would be tiptoeing up to the line of — there’s a reason this is classified. I think the proper role for the government would be to have the President declassify the report. Let it speak for itself. I’ll just leave it at that.

Q: Just one quick followup. When you speak of Saudi Arabia, Senator, are you talking about the government of Saudi Arabia, or are you talking about private actors in Saudi Arabia?

SEN. GRAHAM: Given the nature of the Kingdom, I’m speaking of the Kingdom. In fact, in the litigation that these good people have been involved with, when any institution, whether it’s a financial institution, a charitable or religious institution is raised as a possible coconspirator in 9/11, the Kingdom throws the blanket of sovereign immunity over every entity. So it is a society in which it is difficult to make the kinds of distinctions between public, private, religious, that we would in the United States.

Q: Steven Nelson from U.S. News. A question to the sitting Congressmen. You have the ability to ability to release these pages with immunity. Have you considered doing that? Might you be able to do that some time in the near future, if the President doesn’t declassify?

REP. JONES: Walter Jones from North Carolina; I’ll speak first. When you have a President, Democrat or Republican, who has the authority to release the declassified information, or to determine that it should be the declassified — what we’re trying to do is to put pressure on the White House. We’re trying to say that the House of Representatives, I don’t think it will happen within the House of Representatives, no, no. This is too — the President has the authority to declassify this information and I think that what we’re trying to do, we hope, with this news conference today, that there will be a Senator, who will say, “by God, it’s time. Let’s declassify the information,” and put in the same type of resolution that Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie and I put in on the House side, yesterday.

REP. LYNCH: I don’t think I can add to that, other than, you know, one of the other hats I wear is, I’m the ranking Democrat on the National Security Subcommittee on Oversight; and the proper way for this to become public information is for the President to declassify it. And that’s the way our government should work.

It’s interesting that we are not hearing strong arguments from the White House as to the reasons that they refuse to declassify. It’s silence, inertia. So, I just think we need to keep on pushing. We’ve got 50-some odd new Members of Congress that just came in; we’ll educate them, we will try to make government work the way it’s supposed to work. And I agree with the Senator and the Congressman, that this’ll make us stronger, this will definitely make us stronger.

The release of the report will influence our national security policy and to some degree our foreign policy as well.

REP. JONES: The lady from… you had a question.

Q: Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast, for Senator Graham. Have you had any interest from any Senators and are you actively trying to pursue cooperation on this? And secondly, many of the reports say that the pages aren’t being released because of embarrassment. Embarrassment by whom? Of whom? If you could shed some light on that.

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, it has been my experience over the ten years that I was on the Intelligence Committee, and chair in 2001 and 2002, that much of what passes for classification for national security reasons is really classified because it would disclose incompetence. And since the people who are classifying are also often the subject of the materials, they have an institutional interest in avoiding exposure of their incompetence. So I believe that it is important that all of the information about foreign involvement in 9/11 be disclosed.

In answer to your first question. No, in fact, Congressman Jones and Lynch and I have been huddling on this over the past couple of days, and I will be making contacts with Members of the Senate to encourage them to introduce companion legislation.

REP. JONES: Okay, let me take — these will be the last four questions. Start with this young man, then I’ll come to you in that corner and that’ll be it for the day.

Q: William Hicks from the Daily News Service. This for the two representatives. Is there any organized pushback in Congress about this resolution? I know it failed to move forward last year?

REP. JONES: The problem is, and I understand this: Most members in Congress, we have great respect for each other, forget the party affiliations, we trust each other; but when you’re asking someone to sign on a resolution that they have not read, it’s pretty tough, really. The names that we had last year, every one but two had read the pages. The two that did not read the pages, said that they trust us enough, and that was all — everyone, not just Stephen, and Thomas, and myself — that they would go ahead and go on the resolution, with the hopes of reading.

Now, let me explain: It’s not the easiest thing to read. It’s not like going to the Library of Congress. You have to write a letter to the chairman of the House Intell Committee, and make a request that you be given permission, to go to a classified room and to sit there; you take no notes, you just sit there with somebody watching you read. So it’s not the easiest thing to read the 28 pages, you’ve got to really want to push for it, and you’re going to demand that you get the right to read it.

But we think if Senator Graham and the families can get some other Senators to really put the pressure on, and you have members that will say, well, the issue is the kind that I would do this just for the families if nothing else; because the resolution is just very simple, it just says, “Mr. President, please do your job. You have the authority to do it.”

REP. LYNCH: Yeah, I agree with everything that Walter said. I would say, that, you know, this is 28 pages. Now, I think a lot of folks voted on the health care bill without reading it, but [laughter] that was 2400 pages, so they probably had a good excuse on that one!

But, I’m at a point where, I’m getting a little frustrated, and it is a cumbersome process: You’ve got to go, you’ve got to write the letter, you’ve got to get permission, you’ve got to sit down; you do have maybe a couple of Intelligence Committee staffers on the other side of the table, watching you while you read.

From my own experience, after I read the 28 pages, I told the two people that were observing me, I said, “I’m going to file legislation on this,” I told them, “you can go back to your bosses and tell ’em that after I read the 28 pages, I said, I’m going to file legislation to make this public.” So, I just wanted to be completely honest with them.

And I think that’s the response most Members will have, if they sit down and read this report. So we’ll keep pushing on it. But I’m going to try a different tack this time: I’m going to work the floor and just have Members take my word for it, “You need to sign this. We need to get this disclosed to the American people,” rather than asking them, you know — “you can read it after it’s made public, you know.” Kind of like the health care bill [laughter]…

But I think we’re beyond the point where we’ve been patient enough with folks, and we need a big push in the House, and then, with the Senator’s help a big push in the Senate as well.

REP. JONES: We have three more, and that’ll be it, we’re going to have to cut it off. You can meet with anyone when it’s over, and that will be it. Go ahead, with the tan coat on first.

Q: You know, our standard for the truth is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or else you are lying. Not to release the whole truth is to perpetuate a lie and a lie about the greatest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. And like any lie, this one grows like a cancer, and the consequences of what happens from not revealing this, perpetuate themselves with things like ISIS, and as was mentioned today the terrorist attack in France.

But also, we’re in a situation of economic warfare, and we see the Kingdom participating in a major way to lower the price of oil which may harm some of our enemies, but it maybe harm us and may take down our financial system.

It is urgent that this be released so that we have a public hearing of exactly the consequences of what these people are up to, because those consequences grow every day and threaten this nation more every day.

And I just want to end by saying this: That we really owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Congress people here, and to the families, because they are the patriots of this Republic that have stood for the truth, not only then, but now and in our future, that threaten us directly. [applause]

REP. JONES: Thank you very much.

Q: Les Jameson with hr428.org. We’re working to help the cause to generate as much energy as possible to get the congressmen to read the 28 pages, because after hearing your reactions and how it transformed your understanding of 9/11, then that alone I think will be a huge accomplishment to move forward. And we soon heard that Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida attempted to get access and was denied.

Could you speak to that please and say what you would suggest as a reaction from the public?

REP. LYNCH: I know some of us have responsibilities that require top secret clearance and that might be a situation — I know he was member, and then he was not a member, and then he got re-elected. It may be just a non-continuity of his status, but I think he can repair that. I think he’ll have an opportunity to read it at some point. His classification may not have been reestablished when he went in there to read. I’ve seen that amongst some staffers. I think each congressional office, including their staffers have two people I think that are entitled to top secret clearance, but they’ve got to go through that whole process. So that may be the situation with Mr. Grayson.

Q: Karl Golovin, jfkvigil.com. I’m a retired U.S. Customs agent and in the Fall of 2001, myself and many other agents were assigned to Fresh Kills landfill, where the rubble of World Trade Center 7 was brought, and we were tasked with sifting through WTC7, the 47-story third tower that collapsed that day, and combing out computer components that other agencies didn’t want left in the landfill. And I can just testify from my perspective as an investigator that those three towers were not brought down solely by two airplanes and their jet fuel. That there is abundant evidence of controlled demolition of those three towers.

My question is whether these 28 pages will point at all towards that reality and the potential of true false-flag terrorism in this event.

REP. JONES: Senator, why don’t you answer that? I’ve got an answer, too.

SEN. GRAHAM: My answer is no.

REP. JONES: That’s it. The 28 pages does not deal with that issue at all.

John and you will be the last.

Q: Jack Larson, iamthefaceoftruth.com. My question is, I’ve heard before that there is multiple foreign governments that could be actually implicated in the pages? Is it just totally Saudi Arabia, or is there other active governments that could be involved?

REP. LYNCH: I personally think that the report speaks for itself. And there’s one thing that needs to be said here: Once these 28 pages are released, the press will do their job. We’ve got some smart folks out there on the part of the press. They will investigate this and I think there will be a collective debate and discussion about the implications of these 28 pages, and your question and others will be answered. And that’s the whole process here. We’ll do a deep dive on this collectively, with the full focus of transparency that it deserves. And I think there will be — you know, I’ll learn from the debate. Even though I’ve read the 28 pages, I’m sure there’ll other sets of eyes that will look at that same 28 pages and come up with things that I did not immediate recognize.

So I think all of this is an important understanding process and that transparency from all of these different angles will really enlighten our understanding of this whole terrible and tragic event.

REP. JONES: Terry, do y’all want to say anything before we close?

STRADA: No, I think we’re fine. No, actually, there’s also another organization, 28pages.org that the American people can access and go on there and learn how to reach out to their Congress people, and their Senators and make their phone calls, and move this movement along. That’s another very important element.

REP. JONES: I want to thank Senator Graham and the families for being here today; my dear friend and good friend Stephen Lynch. Thank you, the press, because the only way we’re going to get this done, quite frankly, is your help. You’ve got to help us continue to beat the drum! We’re going to do everything within the House and Senate that we can do with our friends, many of them here today. But when it really comes down to it, it’s your interest that will help us get this done.

Thank you so much for being here, today. Thank you. [applause]

The full transcript appears below of the January 7, 2015 press conference on Capitol Hill featuring former Senator Bob Graham, Representative Walter Jones, Representative Stephen Lynch, and members of the 9/11 families including Terry Strada, national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.

The press conference, which was live streamed on the LaRouchePAC website, was convened to announce the filing of H. Res. 14 to declassify the excised 28 page chapter of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry Report which details foreign state sponsorship and financial support of the 9/11 hijackers, and was very well attended by leading national press services, including CNN, Fox News, US News and World Report, Newsweek, Daily Beast, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, National Review, and numerous others, in addition to numerous independent websites and blogs related to citizen activism on declassification such as www.28pages.org.