CIA Chief: 9/11 '28 Pages' Should Stay in Vault

He says information would cause people to wrongly blame Saudis
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 2, 2016 4:59 AM CDT
CIA Chief: 9/11 '28 Pages' Shouldn't Be Released
CIA Director John Brennan participated in the Senate Intelligence Committee's hearing on worldwide threats earlier this year.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Some 28 pages of classified information believed to link Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 attacks are in a guarded vault—and that's where CIA Director John Brennan says they should stay. On NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Brennan said the documents contain "a combination of things that are accurate and inaccurate," and they were withheld because of "concerns about sensitive methods," the Hill reports. He warned that if they are released, as former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and others are demanding, "some people may seize upon that uncorroborated, un-vetted information" and use it to "point to Saudi involvement," which he thinks would be "very, very inaccurate," reports the Independent; it notes that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

Brennan said that the 9/11 Commission had already dealt with the information and concluded that there was no evidence that "the Saudi government as an institution, or Saudi officials individually, had provided financial support to al-Qaeda." Brennan—speaking on the fifth anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden—also spoke to Meet the Press about ISIS, saying "we have to remove the leadership that directs that organization to carry out these horrific attacks," especially ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He said he wasn't distracted by current political campaigns—even Donald Trump's. At the CIA, he said, "we stay focused like a laser on what we need to do to keep this country safe and secure." (The CIA "live-tweeted" the bin Laden raid Sunday.)

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