WASHINGTON — The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document.
One U.S. official who has read the classified section said it describes "very direct, very specific links" between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators "that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental."
Said another official: "It's really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the [Saudi] government" as well.
Despite such a harsh assessment of the alleged role of the Riyadh government, those U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say congressional investigators found no specific evidence proving that top Saudi officials -- notably members of the royal family -- conspired in any purposeful way to fund the Sept. 11 plot or other acts of terrorism.
And they concede that senior leaders of the CIA, FBI, Treasury Department and other agencies involved in the U.S. counter-terrorism effort have begun to raise strenuous behind-the-scenes objections to some of the assertions made in the classified section of the report.
Some U.S. officials disagree sharply over whether key members of the Saudi royal family knowingly took action to support terrorist activity or simply showed a pattern of what one official called "willful ignorance."
The nearly 900-page report, released last week, concluded that a series of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence failures preceded the Sept. 11 attacks and that there was evidence of financial support for the hijackers by an unnamed foreign government. U.S. officials have confirmed that that government is Saudi Arabia, but nearly all the details supporting that claim are contained in the lengthy redacted section of the document.
On Friday, several dozen U.S. lawmakers joined in calling on the Bush administration to declassify the section several days after the Saudi Arabian government also called for its release.
