A Warning About the Secret 9/11 Pages

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Former Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, left, and former Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey at a hearing in 2007.Credit Alex Wong/Getty Images

The leaders of the independent commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks, former Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey and former Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, carried out that highly sensitive task with integrity and rigor.

Now they are weighing in again as the Obama administration prepares to make public at least some of the 28 pages from a separate, earlier investigation by a congressional panel that examined possible Saudi government involvement in the attacks. The pages have been kept secret since 2002.

In a statement issued last Friday, Mr. Kean, the commission chairman, and Mr. Hamilton, the vice chairman, effectively delivered this bottom line to Americans: Be cautious in judging the material when it becomes available.

Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a co-chairman of the separate 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, has long claimed there is evidence of complicity by institutions and people in Saudi Arabia beyond the 15 Saudi nationals who were among the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists. Such allegations are adding new tensions to an already fraught Saudi-American relationship.

But Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kean stress that, unlike their commission, the congressional panel never had a chance to investigate any of the leads contained in the 28 pages. Those pages were based mostly on raw, unvetted material from the F.B.I. and “therefore, are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules. Those rules exist to avoid implicating people in serious crimes without the benefit of follow-up investigation to determine if such suspicions are substantiated,” they wrote.

The two men said they consider this point crucial since the attacks were the worst mass murder ever in the United States. “Those responsible deserve the maximum punishment possible. Therefore, accusations of complicity in that mass murder from responsible authorities are a grave matter. Such charges should be levied with care,” they added.

Their comments do not appear to be an attempt to whitewash any Saudi role. The 9/11 report was critical of Saudi Arabia: It cited the government’s funding of schools and mosques that fanned an extreme form of Islam known as Wahhabism, as well as contributions by some wealthy Saudis to Islamic charities with links to terrorism.

During its tenure, the commission investigated all leads in the 28 pages and only one Saudi government employee was implicated in the plot, Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said. He was Fahad al Thumairy, who worked as an imam at a mosque in Los Angeles and was employed by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The commission found no evidence that Mr. Thumairy, who returned to Saudi Arabia in 2003, assisted two of the hijackers when they came to Los Angeles in 2000 but “he is still a person of interest,” they wrote.

When it wrapped up its investigation in 2004, the commission concluded that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al Qaeda. In 2015, another independent panel created by Congress, the 9/11 Review Commission, found no new evidence against the Saudi government.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said on Monday that it was realistic to expect the administration to release at least some of the 28 classified pages by June. Whatever emerges must be weighed in the context of the work already done by Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton and their team.

Correction: April 28, 2016
An earlier version of this post misstated the source of the 28 pages of material on the 9/11 attacks that have been kept secret since 2002. The pages are from an investigation by a congressional panel, not from the 9/11 Commission Report.