WASHINGTON (CNN) — It’s been more than a decade since the 9/11 report was released, and the leader behind the effort is pushing President Barack Obama to hand over the final 28 pages to the American public.
Those redacted pages from the congressional investigation into the attacks specifically focus on the role of foreign governments in the al Qaeda plot.
“They primarily deal with who financed 9/11, and they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia,” former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida told CNN’s Michael Smercornish over the weekend. He co-chaired the panel that released the report in 2002.
Graham, along with Rep. Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) and Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) will hold a news conference Wednesday asking Obama to declassify those remaining pages of the 832-page 9/11 report.
In the months after 9/11, the House and the Senate convened joint hearings and produced the massive report. But the 28 pages were classified by then-President George W. Bush.
The government feared releasing them “could adversely affect ongoing counterterrorism efforts,” according to a letter from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Terry Strada, whose husband died in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said 9/11 families like hers have been pushing for the release for 13 years. The families say Obama personally promised he would release those redacted pages — but it hasn’t happened.
“They are protecting the Saudi regime over protecting the American people,” Strada told Smerconish. “And that is the travesty.”
Bill Doyle’s son was working in the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks and was among the nearly 3,000 killed.
“If these pages were to be released, we could hold them accountable — the people that financed 9/11,” Doyle told CNN.
