By Joe Giambrone

Since December 2002, at the latest, it became glaringly obvious that certain individuals in the US government had lied about how the 9/11 attacks had come to be. When the Bush administration censored the official congressional investigation, the “Joint Inquiry” into the attacks, notably the 28-page section on foreign state funding to the named hijackers, its legitimacy crumbled.

With that first 9/11 investigation redacted and numerous questions outstanding, the attack victims’ families pressed for a second investigation, later to be known as the “9/11 Commission.” Key findings of this Commission were false—or falsified—as those now released “28 pages” show.

The public evidence against the Saudis is partial and wasn’t followed-up on, indicating internal pressures both before and after the attacks.

One reason for the limited understanding is that it was only after September 11 that the U.S. Government began to aggressively investigate this issue. Prior to September 11^th, the FBI apparently did not focus investigative resources on [REDACTED] Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.’ – Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11^th, 2001, p.415

Senator Bob Graham, its primary author, has complained vociferously in the years since. The BBC revealed a White House document telling US law enforcement to avoid investigating the Saudis, soon after the Bush administration seized power in January, 2001.

After the elections, the agencies were told to ‘back off’ investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. – Greg Palast, BBC Newsnight, November 6, 2001

The evidence of government malfeasance around the 9/11 attacks is not theoretical. The Joint Inquiry implicates Saudi agents who aided several of the named hijackers inside the US. They are Omar al Bayoumi, Osama Bassnan, Shaykh al-Thumairy, Saleh al-Hussayen, and Abdullah bin Laden, the brother of Osama! Prince Bandar bin Sultan, “Bandar Bush,” is also named throughout the report and supplied money to those named individuals. Further redactions plague the current version of the Joint Inquiry report, which could potentially implicate others.

They all walked free, while 2,996 civilians perished in the attacks and another 6,000 were wounded. Over 4,000 first responders have contracted cancer since, due to the toxic environment of the aftermath.

The 28 pages are a starting point, not the end. In 2005 (three years later), the CIA Inspector General, under pressure, released another damning report:

[Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar] were among the hijackers of 9/11, were known by the [CIA] in early January 2000 to have traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to participate in a meeting of suspected terrorists… In January 2000, CTC officers received information that one of these suspected terrorists had a US visa; in March 2000, these officers had information that the other had flown from Bangkok to Los Angeles. In the period January through March 2000, some 50 to 60 individuals read one or more of six Agency cables containing travel information related to these terrorists. (emphasis added) – CIA Office of Inspector General Report, 2005, page xiii/xiv

The controversy concerns what the CIA prefers to call “information sharing” (with FBI), but the Counterterrorism Advisor to the White House, Richard Clarke, has described this as CIA deliberately hiding vital information from his office and from the FBI.

Unless someone intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution, I would automatically get it… There was not a lack of information sharing. They told us everything – except this. (emphasis added) – Richard Clarke, Terror “Czar,” 1992-2003

Clarke was the highest counterterrorism official in America on 9/11. When he accused George Tenet of hiding the terrorists from him and his staff the corporate media went silent, rather than investigating these leads. The CIA denied everything and still clings to its mistakes-were-made story. The CIA’s official “incompetence” story has all the key incompetents promoted rather than fired.

Several FBI agents desperate to prevent 9/11 also had direct dealings with CIA operatives. An FBI liaison to the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), Doug Miller, drafted a memo to alert the FBI about Hazmi and Midhar coming to America, but a CIA superior blocked that cable from ever being sent.

You follow terrorists halfway around the God damned globe. You find out they have visas on their passport, and you don’t tell the FBI? – FBI Agent Mark Rossini

Beyond the CIA’s obstruction of justice and arguably aiding and abetting terrorists—which would be Treason—the NSA also prevented its surveillance of Al Qaeda phone calls from ever reaching the US FBI agents on the case.

Between 2000 and 2001, as many as twenty calls were made between Hazmi and Midhar and a known Al Qaeda number in Yemen. The NSA never distributed this information to the FBI. – Author Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker

Enough deliberate obstruction allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed that it is shocking how Americans remain apathetic, complacent, and willfully ignorant of the known facts, never mind the unknown story, which remains covered-up. A Florida court is currently hiding 80,000 pages of FBI surveillance of a mansion owned by a Saudi family connected to the hijackers.

To be clear, these are 80k pages that were never seen by the House of Representatives or Senate to formulate their Joint Inquiry into 9/11. They were never seen by the 9/11 Commission, a supposedly independent body that was actually stuffed with conflicts of interest and insiders.

Multiple hijackers visited this Sarasota mansion, and yet for some reason the FBI has lied about their investigation of it. The record remains classified to this day.

So many clear red flags poke out of the official 9/11 story, and yet the American people largely prefer comfortable myths to hard truths. The propaganda has gotten so thick that you can now read op-eds on CNN with absurd headlines like, “This congressional act [JASTA] threatens US national security.” The author happened to be a Saudi, of course, but more importantly, Nawaf Obaid “previously was special adviser to Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal.”

Who is Turki al-Faisal?