Sen. Bob Graham's Crusade to Release the Missing 28 Pages

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Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

   STONEWALLED 05.17.16 7:00 AM ET
   
   by ELANOR CLIFT @EleanorClift   
   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/17/inside-a-senator-s-crusade-to-release-the-missing-28-pages-of-the-9-11-report.html
   Inside a Senator's Crusade to Release
the Missing 28 Pages of the 9/11 Report

   Former senator Bob Graham is on a mission to get the missing 28 pages
  from a congressional 9/11 investigation released. His biggest obstacle
  so far? The FBI.
   
   Former Florida senator Bob Graham caused a stir when he used the term
   "aggressive deception" to describe the FBI's treatment of 28 pages from
   a 2003 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.
   
   The word choice was intentional, the co-chair of the investigation of
   the 9/11 terrorist attacks told The Daily Beast, because to Graham,
   what the FBI did was worse than the conventional Washington cover-up.
   
   "Cover-up is a fairly passive action. You put something away and keep
   it out of the vision of other people who might wish to see it," Graham
   explained. "Aggressive deception is where you try to change the
   narrative in an untruthful way, and then you keep the material that
   would provide the truth away from the people. So the only thing they
   see and are exposed to is the false narrative."
   
   

   
   It's an explosive charge, a hair's breadth away from calling the
   highest law enforcement officials liars, but when Graham lays out the
   sequence of events that brought him—a former chairman of the Senate
   Intelligence Committee— to level such a broadside, his ire is
   understandable.
   
   The last few years have pitted him against not only the FBI but also a
   range of government agencies and officials determined to keep under
   wraps information about Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which he
   believes the public has the right to know.
   
   For Graham, getting this information to the public has been a lonely
   crusade—until recently. He finally succeeded, after months of trying,
   in getting an appointment scheduled for today with Director of National
   Intelligence James Clapper, who is overseeing the administration's
   review of the 28 pages with an eye to releasing them.
   
   Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission,
   told The Guardian that there is "clear evidence" that Saudis working
   for the Saudi government aided the hijackers, joining other Commission
   members calling for the public's right to know.
   
   After a 60 Minutes segment aired last month on the 28 pages, the White
   House called to tell Graham the decision would be made soon. When he
   pressed for a firmer deadline, he was told one to two months.
   
   Graham, who keeps meticulous diaries that account for his time,
   concluded, "That brings us to the second week of June."
   
   Still, he cautions the time line is not a guarantee of release, but
   rather a decision on whether or not to release the pages. Some of the
   28-page chapter was not classified, but it was redacted, and he had it
   in front of him when we talked on the phone.
   
   "Page 395, part 4, Finding, Discussion and Narrative regarding Certain
   Sensitive National Security Matters," he read. Page 395 is the first
   page of that chapter, and after that with few exceptions there is blank
   page after blank page, he said. One statement that appears on page 395
   says it is possible that these kinds of connections between 9/11 and
   foreign sources "could suggest as written in a CIA memorandum
   INCONTROVERTIBLE EVIDENCE (emphasis is Graham's) that there is support
   for these terrorists" and then it is redacted.
   
   "I happen to know what the balance of that section is but I can't tell
   you," he says. "If the 28 pages come back with that kind of redaction,
   their value will be reduced."
   
   Almost a decade after putting the investigation to bed, Graham got
   pulled back into the 9/11 probe in 2011 when writers researching a book
   on the 10th anniversary of the attacks discovered that a well-off Saudi
   family living in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, had contact
   with three of the four 9/11 pilots, including Mohammad Atta.
   
   As The Daily Beast's Shane Harris detailed, the information was
   uncovered when neighbors recognized the hijackers from their photos as
   frequent visitors and told law enforcement.
   
   "FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in
   Florida: Congress kept in dark," read the headline in a September 2011
   Florida Bulldog piece that ran in The Miami Herald.
   
   The FBI field office in Tampa quickly refuted the story, claiming that
   a six-month investigation had found no relationship between the
   hijackers and the family, and that all documents had been turned over
   to the 9/11 Commission and the JICI (Joint Inquiry into Intelligence
   Community Activities) before and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
   
   That was the inquiry Graham chaired, and he couldn't recall getting any
   information about Saudi involvement in Sarasota. He called Porter Goss,
   his co-chair at the JICI, who had been a CIA agent and later director,
   "So he knows the territory," Graham said. Goss didn't recall any such
   info and neither did Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean, who co-chaired the 9/11
   Commission and said they turned over all documents to the National
   Archives.
   
   Graham had a search done of the Archives and the Sarasota information
   was not there. He called the security officer for the Intelligence
   Committee and was told he needed dates and file numbers for a search.
   He called the FBI in Tampa to make the request, and about a month
   later, in October 2011 after the Miami Herald story had run, Graham
   checked in with the security official in Congress. A civil service
   employee, not a political appointee, he showed Graham the two files
   that had belatedly arrived from Tampa FBI, one from early in the
   investigation, and the other at its end.
   
   The reports directly contradicted what the FBI had said publicly. "The
   agent in charge wrote (in the first report) that the investigation was
   NOT (Graham's emphasis) completed and he suggested lines of several
   inquiries," Graham recounted. "In the second file, he also wrote in
   very declarative language there was contact between the Saudis and
   three hijackers."
   
   Soon after reading those files, Graham and his wife flew into Dulles
   Airport for Thanksgiving with a daughter who lives in Virginia.
   
   To their surprise, two FBI agents met the couple at the gate and guided
   them to where a third "higher up" agent was waiting to speak to Graham.
   
   At first, Graham said, he was encouraged as he was escorted to the
   FBI's office at the airport, thinking maybe there had been a
   breakthrough. The FBI placed his wife, Adele, in a room by herself.
   When she asked for something to read, they gave her an FBI Training
   Manual.
   
   Then Deputy Director Sean Joyce, accompanied by a young female agent
   and a middle-aged Justice Department attorney, "told me basically
   everything about 911 was known and I was wasting my time and I should
   get a life," recounts Graham.
   
   Having just read those contradictory FBI files from the Tampa office,
   Graham pushed back, only to be told the FBI had "other information that
   put what I had read in a broader context and would lead to a different
   conclusion."
   
   Fair enough, Graham said. Can I see this information? Joyce asked the
   young female agent to get the materials that provided the context, and
   a date was set for after Thanksgiving to meet in the FBI's downtown
   Washington office.
   
   Graham arrived at the agreed upon time but when Joyce came in, he said
   the meeting adjourned. He also told Graham to stop calling the Tampa
   agent who had authored the memos, and who had been transferred to
   Honolulu.
   
   "And that was the end of that," says Graham. "The meeting ended before
   it began."
   
   "Not everyone is shocked that the FBI is not truthful," Graham says
   with wry humor, and he credits investigative reporter Dan Christensen,
   founder of the Florida Bulldog (www.floridabulldog.org), with filing a
   FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to get the FBI files. The FBI
   resisted, claiming the files were protected under a privacy exemption.
   
   "The three hijackers are dead, and the family is back in Saudi Arabia.
   Whose privacy are we talking about?" Graham exclaims, incredulous.
   
   The judge rejected that motion along with another equally unbelievable
   claim that the FBI didn't have any documents to disclose after a
   six-month investigation. Finally, in July 2014, the FBI turned over
   80,000 pages and, as The Daily Beast reported last week, a federal
   judge is poring over them to determine which ones warrant public
   release.
   
   The FBI declined to comment when asked by The Daily Beast to respond to
   Graham's charge of "aggressive deception."
   
   National security is the reason to de-classify the 28 pages, says
   Graham. "I think the country is paying a real price for withholding
   this information, emboldening them [the Saudis] to be the primary
   financiers of terrorists and the primary recruiters of terrorists
   through their madrassas, and this failure to hold them to account has
   been extremely damaging," says Graham.
   
   Whatever the decision on the 28 pages, it comes after a years' long
   odyssey that in Graham's view comes from the top and reflects "a clear
   directive that had gone out from the White House to avoid embarrassing
   the Saudis because the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice, Department of
   Treasury, Department of State, all these agencies wouldn't be playing
   off the same sheet of music if the composer didn't want it, and the
   composer lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
   
   CIA Director John Brennan recently said he was "puzzled" by the remarks
   of Graham and others because all the 9/11 leads were investigated and
   there was "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution, or
   Saudi officials individually, had provided financial support to Al
   Qaeda."
   
   Five 9/11 widows issued a statement that if Director Brennan is so sure
   that the 28 pages have only "disjointed information, then why is he
   fighting so hard to have them kept classified and away from the
   American public? What is he so worried about? Especially if, according
   to him, releasing the 28 pages will exonerate the Saudis."
   
   Unlike his predecessor, President Obama has no personal ties with the
   Saudi royal family, lessening the potential for embarrassment, but
   there are policy implications to anything that roils a key relationship
   in the Middle East.
   
   "The irony of this is the Saudis themselves say they want the 28 pages
   released," says Graham. "Whether that's a genuine feeling or a cover, I
   don't know. But we can't say we can't do it because the Saudis don't
   want it."
   
   With the potential for release next month, or certainly by the end of
   the Obama administration, answers to one of Washington's most puzzling
   mysteries could finally come to light.
   
   Updated 5/17, 1:30pm a previous version referred to the document as an
   FBI memorandum, and has been corrected to be a CIA memorandum. We
   regret the error. "

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Friday Webcast, May 20, 2016
by  LaRouchePAC , Published on May 20, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UefkWWvWvsM
  "We begin tonight's broadcast with an on the ground video of activists
   with LaRouche PAC's Manhattan Project who held a rally earlier this
   week demanding an end to the Obama Administration's cover up of the
   Saudi-British coup behind 9-11. We are joined live by Diane Sare,
   member of the LPAC Policy Committee who reports on the continued
   mobilization to release the 28 pages in wake of the unanimous passage
   of the JASTA bill in the US Senate. The British-Saudi friends of Obama
   have gone into overdrive. Jeff Steinberg elaborates on the crucial role
   President Putin is playing in continuing to outflank his adversaries in
   the context of the ASEAN meeting occurring right now in Sochi.
   [ ... ]"

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It certainly starts  looking like since the Finicum shooting the  WASP
run FBI are from now on here the BAD GUYS  and the  JEW run and STASI
Rat-PAC designed HOMELAND SECURITY, under the direction of Michael
Chertoff, are the new GOOD GUYS ...  Is this a well organized campaign?
Like singing `Hahaha' at the front office of the FBI in New York ? There is
more to this than meets the eye :

   
   
   A makeshift roadside shrine to LaVoy Finicum
   Did FBI Agents Lie About LaVoy Finicum's Shooting?
   An investigation shows two unaccounted-for shots, apparently fired by
  federal officers—and suggestions they tried to cover them up.
   DAVID A. GRAHAM | MAR 17, 2016 | U.S.
   http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/malheur-oregon-occupation-lavoy-finicum-fbi/474219/

  "Given that it involved a weeks-long occupation of federal property by
   armed men, facing off against equally armed law enforcement, the
   standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon ended almost as
   well as could be hoped—with the ringleaders, as well as Cliven Bundy,
   in jail, the refuge cleared, and only one death: that of LaVoy Finicum.
   
   Finicum, who had become a de facto spokesman for the occupation, was
   shot on January 26 when Oregon State Police and FBI intercepted two
   cars that occupiers were driving to John Day, a nearby town. Both cars
   stopped. The occupants of one car surrendered, but Finicum, driving the
   other, drove ahead. When he encountered a roadblock, he tried to drive
   around it, but his SUV became lodged in snow. This was his vehicle's
   second stop. Finicum jumped out of the vehicle and was shot. Even that
   shooting struck many observers as justified: Finicum had nearly hit
   agents with the truck, and as he was shot he was reaching for a pocket
   where a gun was found.
   
   But now the clean finish isn't looking so clean after all. A
   three-county investigation that wrapped up last week found that
   Finicum's shooting by Oregon State Police was justified, but it also
   revealed the existence of two mystery shots, apparently fired by FBI
   agents. OSP officers apparently shot six shots—three at the truck as it
   barreled toward the roadblock, and then another three that struck
   Finicum after he left the car. But a cellphone recording by one of the
   people in the car, Shawna Cox, revealed two other shots, one of which
   blew out a window.
   
   The problem is that FBI agents did not tell investigators they had
   fired the shots. Reportedly no one inventoried the FBI agents' guns
   because none of the other people present had seen them shoot, and they
   didn't say they had. Worse, there's some reason to believe the shots
   were intentionally concealed, The Oregonian reports. A state trooper
   reported seeing two bullet casings on the ground after the shooting.
   Those casings were copper-colored, while OSP uses only silver-colored
   casings. But those copper-colored casings were not found later in a
   sweep of the site.
   
   Greg Bretzing, the FBI agent in charge of Oregon, issued a statement
   acknowledging the discrepancy:
   
      The county's investigation also indicated that, in between the two
      series of shots fired by OSP troopers, one, and possibly two,
      additional shots were fired by law enforcement as Mr. Finicum was
      exiting the vehicle after hitting the snow bank. As autopsy results
      confirm, neither of these shots struck Mr. Finicum. The question of
      who fired these shots has not been resolved. Upon learning this,
      and given the FBI presence on scene, I immediately contacted our
      Inspection Division which notified the United States Department of
      Justice's Office of Inspector General which is currently
      investigating this matter.
   
   Officials also released the video Cox shot. It's a counterpart of the
   FBI's video, which was filmed from a surveillance plane, and does a
   good job of capturing the broad outlines of the incident but little to
   illuminate the details. Cox's video is also limited—it reveals some
   details about Finicum and the crash before he was shot, but it's tough
   to tell what's going on outside the truck.
   
   The footage shows Finicum taunting officers during the first stop, when
   both vehicles were intercepted, holding his arms outside the window and
   telling them to go ahead and shoot him if they pleased but that he
   intended to go meet the Grant County sheriff in John Day. The
   passengers are heard complaining they don't have cell service to get in
   touch with other people on the remote road. Then Finicum tells everyone
   to get down and guns the engine—unbeknownst to him, directly toward the
   roadblock.
   
   "Hang on! Hang on!" Finicum says. Then comes the impact—and the second
   stop. He jumps out of the car and shouts, "Go ahead and shoot me!"
   
   The people in the car scream as gunshots ring out and try to figure out
   what's happening outside the car. There are sounds of
   explosions—possibly flash-bang grenades—and smoke starts to fill the
   car. The passengers still in the car can see the laser sights on guns
   dancing around the car. "I don't dare get out, 'cause they'll shoot
   me," one woman says. The video then ends.
   
   

   
   The four FBI agents were part of the bureau's elite Hostage Rescue
   Team. As The Washington Post reports, the operators were shadowy and
   mysterious even to the state police working alongside them.
   
   The revelations threaten to cast a new pall over the team. During the
   1990s, the HRT was implicated in the two disasters at Waco and Ruby
   Ridge, where the government was universally acknowledged to have
   bungled standoffs. Those experiences were often cited as a reason for
   the FBI's notably hands-off approach to the Malheur situation—keeping a
   distance, letting people come and go, and allowing the occupation to
   run for weeks. The general positive reaction to the standoff seemed to
   suggest a return to good graces for the HRT. The hiccups in the
   investigation point to what might be another blemish for the team—even
   as the rest of the occupation was resolved effectively. "