Former US official latest to allege Saudi 9/11 link

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON

Another member of the congressional commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks has said he believes Saudi officials supported the 19 hijackers that crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In an interview published Thursday by the Guardian, John Lehman, an investment banker former Secretary of the Navy, who was one of 10 commission members who authored the 2004 report, said that it “should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he said.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia.

Former Sen. Bob Graham who co-chaired the congressional inquiry previously said he believes substantial support for the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, including the government.

The comments have further pressured the Obama administration to declassify the remaining 28 pages of the commission's report that have yet to be released to the public.

They have remained classified for more than 11 years.

But former New York Gov. Tom Kean and Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, Graham and Lehman’s fellow commissioners, have praised Riyadh saying that it is “an ally of the United States in combatting terrorism” and that the commission found only one Saudi government official to be “implicated in the 9/11 plot investigation.”

Lehman rebutted, calling their claim that only one Saudi official was “implicated” in supporting the hijackers “a game of semantics.” He said the commission was aware of at least five Saudi officials who were strongly suspected of involvement.

“They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated,” he said. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”

But he said that he did not believe that any senior civilian officials, nor the Saudi royal family, were involved in the al-Qaeda attacks.

The White House is expected to announce by June whether it will declassify the 28 pages.