Blake Hall
The Central Intelligence Agency, otherwise known as the CIA, released a whole bunch of documents late Friday afternoon relating to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Among them, and by far the juiciest of the lot, is a section in the agency’s 495-page “master report” titled “Issues Relating to Saudi Arabia”.
The Saudi section happens to be the final 30 pages of the report (a report created in 2005 to detail and record who exactly was responsible for the intelligence failures on that awful day). For years it’s been suggested that the Saudis — to be specific the House of Saud — were involved with the Al Qaeda hijackers, in that they helped fund them and the attack that murdered thousands of innocent Americans.
After all, 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the plot were from Saudi Arabia.
It has all the trappings for a spicy, lurid read.
Here’s the problem, though. Most of the pages look like this:
As a matter of fact, here’s the only part of the section that’s not redacted:
Assessment of the finding
Many of the points of this finding relate to the investigative efforts on the Saudi intelligence presence in the United States and of Saudi officials’ contacts with terrorists in the country, and, as such, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) 9/11 Review Team defers consideration of these to the Department of Justice and the FBI. The Team lacks access to the full range of investigative materials in FBI possession and is therefore unable to either concur or dissent on those points. In addition, the Team encountered no evidence that the Saudi Government knowingly and willingly supported al-Qa’ida terrorists. Individuals in both the Near East Division (NE) and the Counterterrorist Center [REDACTED] told the Team they had not seen any reliable reporting confirming Saudi Government involvement with and financial support for terrorism prior to 9/11, although a few also speculated that dissident sympathizers within the government may have aided al-Qa’ida. A January 1999 Directorate of Intelligence (DI) Office of Transnational Issues Intelligence Report on Bin Ladin’s finances indicated that “limited” reporting suggested that “a few Saudi Government officials” may support Usama Bin Ladin (UBL) but added that the reporting was “too sparse to determine with any accuracy” such support. None of the Saudi Government officials named in that report was a member of a [REDACTED FOR 26 MORE PAGES]
To read the entire report, click here.