Saudi Blackmail Obama over 9/11

[Peter Lemkin]

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[TD="width: 84%"]28 Pages Later

By Michael Springmann [/TD]
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Declassify the '28 Pages'
(image by larouchepac.org) DMCA

28PAGES LATER...J. Michael Springmann & Barbara Honegger*

In 2002, a JointHouse-Senate Intelligence Committee investigated U.S. intelligence servicefailures leading to the September 11, 2001 "terrorist" attacks. The Congressional report totaled 836 pages,of which the final chapter -- 28 pages in length -- was and still is completelyclassified.
Forover a decade, family members of the 9/11 victims, the co-chair of the JointIntelligence Committee investigation itself former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.),a majority of the members of the9/11 Commission and other individuals and organizations have urged declassificationof these pages, arguing that what is known about them from members of Congresswho have read them and gone public indicates that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and possibly also Israel are named ashaving been involved in organizing, financing and protecting at least some ofthe "hijackers" of the September 11 plot. High level calls for the declassification and release ofthe 28 pages took a quantum leap on April 10, 2016, with a special edition of CBSNews' award-winning investigative journalism program 60 Minutes dedicated to the topic as well as Nancy Pelosi(D-Calif.), the longest-serving Democrat on the House of Representatives'Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, calling for their release in an officialstatement.
However,no American politician wants to bell the cat. And few influential citizens do, either. The cries we hear are for President Barack Obama to "declassify"the 28 Pages, and before leaving for his recent trip to Saudi Arabia he did saythat he "favored" their release. Unspoken in this statement, however, are two important facts: 1) if the pages from anexecutive branch document, President Obama himself is the highestdeclassification authority in the executive branch and could -- and should --declassify and release them immediately; but 2) the pages are part of a Congressional branch document and soare "owned" by Congress, which has the sole authority to declassify and releasethem, which has been unequivocally stated in writing on CIA letterhead; and as Congress as a body hasdelegated such decisions tothe House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the very Committees who wrote the report containing the 28Pages have the sole authority to declassify and release them at any time -- and the president, as the head of theexecutive branch, doesnot. The executive and congressional branches aretherefore playing a cynical game of 'good fed, bad fed' with the 9/11 victims' family membersand the American people.
Buteven if President Obama had the authority to declassify and release the 28pages, we don't believe hewould do so. Campaigning on ending thewar in Iraq, he has, instead, continued it. He has also warred against Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and, by Saudi proxy,Yemen. So, there is little reason toexpect that he will let American citizens and the world see how he and the George W. Bushadministration have protected countries which have supported internationalterrorism.
BUT" There really is a better way, and one that Congress has used before.
1. Senators and Representatives can read thecontents of the 28 Pages in camera inthe House and Senate Intelligence Committees' Secure Compartmented InformationFacility (SCIF) and then openly recite from memory and discus their contents andmeaning on the floor of either House. In 1971, then-Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) placed4,100 of the 7,000 pages of The PentagonPapers into the Congressional Record, partially by reading from some of themon the Senate Floor and, later, by inserting the remainder through an aide intothe record of a meeting of hisSenate Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. (The Pentagon Papers was the informal name givento a secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and militaryinvolvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.)
Thereis constitutional and legal justification for this.
2. Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution states:
The Senators andRepresentatives...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of thePeace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session oftheir respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and forany Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any otherPlace. [emphasis added]
3. In Gravel v. United States, 408 US606 (1972), the U. S. Supreme Court rejected the executive branch's argument and thoseof lower courts that Senator Gravel and his aides had broken the law. In upholding the immunity of members of Congressunder the Speech or DebateClause, the court clearly stated that the clause "... wasdesigned to assure a co-equal branch of the government wide freedom of speech,debate, and deliberation without intimidation or threats from the ExecutiveBranch. It thus protects Members against prosecutions that directly impingeupon or threaten the legislative process. We have no doubt that Senator Gravel maynot be made to answer --either interms of questions or in terms of defending himself from prosecution--for theevents that occurred at the subcommittee meeting."
And, in fact, for almost a year nowformer Senator Mike Gravel has been calling for just one courageous member of Congressto step forward and become "The Mike Gravel for the 28 Pages." He has personally met withRepresentatives and Senators who have already read the pages asking them to step forward and do what he did, andhas sent a law review articledetailing how Gravel v. United States and the multiple subsequent courtrulings upholding it continue to ensure members of Congress near-absoluteimmunity should they recite from memory what they have read of the28 pages on the floor of the House or the Senate.
It's time to end the "good fed, badfed" game that's been going for almost 15 years over whether to, and who can,declassify the 28 pages of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee Reporton the Sept. 11attacks. Let's not hear any more calls to "Let George do it" -- for the Presidentto declassify the pages which he doesn't have the authority to do. Let's have Rep. Nancy Pelosi or Sen. RandPaul or any other member of Congress read the 28 Pages and summarize them from memory onthe floor of either House into the Congressional Record. Let's finally hear somecommon sense, truth and wisdom from the courageous member of Congress who stepsforward to be "The Mike Gravel for the 28 Pages".

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