Allaying doubts: ‘9/11 report not proof of Saudi complicity’

CIA chief says it is just a preliminary’ review in aftermath of the attacks

WASHINGTON: CIA chief John Brennan said on Saturday that secret findings of a 2002 congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks should not be taken as evidence of official Saudi complicity.

“These 28 pages, I believe they are going to come out, I think it’s good that they come out. But people shouldn’t take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks,” Brennan said in an interview with Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned television news channel.

He noted that the report was produced just a year after al Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

It “was a very preliminary review, trying to pull together bits and pieces of information, reporting about who was responsible for 9/11,” Brennan said in a clip of the interview posted on the station’s website.

“Subsequently the 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement, Saudi government involvement and their finding, their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi senior officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks,” he said.

Brennan added that over the past 15 years the Saudis “have become among our best counterterrorism partners.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2016.