9/11 20th Anniversary: America deserves the truth

So you think Congress is hopelessly divided and bipartisanship is the new third rail of politics? Consider the quiet movement by a fledgling group of Senators and House members to come to grips with one of the great mysteries of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Politics sometimes manages to carve strange roads through rocky landscapes that can lead to unusual destinations. The path to Congressional bipartisanship in recent years, however, has been akin to a walk through an unlit room where all the furniture has been rearranged and everyone trips.

Exhibit A is immigration.

Remember all that hopeful talk in 2013 about how four Republican and four Democratic senators — the gallant “Gang of Eight” — would rewrite America’s rules on immigration so everyone would be happy?

It was a noble idea, born from the best of intentions. Such disparate senators as Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Robert Menendez, Jeff Flake, Michael Bennett, Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer all joined forces, politely smiling as they posed in front of stacks of microphones and flags and promised to find a bipartisan solution to all the undocumented migrants that had streamed into America.

Nothing happened. Immigration became part of America’s vicious culture wars. By 2016, Donald Trump turned it into an election punchline that catapulted him to the White House.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 are a different matter, however. 

After that clear-blue-sky September Tuesday became so clouded in acrid smoke and America learned that nearly 3,000 people had been killed by a gang of theologically warped jihadists who were affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s Islamist terrorist network, the nation united.

We came together to grieve. We also came together to bring justice to bin Laden and his sycophants.  

OK, the veneer of unity lasted less than a year before the usual political bickering broke out. But that initial elixir of national consensus was real. And all these years later, the threads of unity back then are helping to form a foundation of bipartisanship over the 9/11 attacks that still seems to resonate even as the Democratic and Republican congressional members have become even more angry with each other other issues.

The political glue that unites some members of today’s disparate political factions is an explosive question that has floated for years on the edges of the 9/11 story: Did Saudi government officials help bin Laden’s terrorists carry out their sick mission?

What’s significant here is that plenty of evidence has already emerged to point a finger of blame directly at the Saudi Arabian government. In other words, this is no silly conspiracy theory, dreamed up by nerdy guys who hover over their laptops all day in their pajamas.

What’s also significant is that Republicans and Democrats are actually talking to each other about this issue.

Pressure builds on Saudi Arabia

The numbers of political figures involved are still small — just a handful from each party, with most of them from New York and New Jersey, which lost so many residents in in the attacks. But could this be the beginning of a significant effort to find the truth about the alleged Saudi link to 9/11?

At issue is not so much what the Saudis have said — or even what records they might be hiding. The center of this debate involves our own government.

The FBI has amassed thousands of pages of evidence on the Saudi connection. But the FBI, with the backing of a series of presidential administrations, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama and Donald Trump, has dug in its spit-shined heels and refused to open its files.   

Now, as America prepares for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an outcry for full disclosure by the FBI — and Saudi Arabia, too — is building.

Will it result in full transparency? The answer to that question is still a mystery. 

If you’ve followed this columnist’s coverage of this issue in recent years, you already know that the amount of information — and its potential impact — is hardly small or insignificant.

Fifteen of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens. They sneaked into the United States, exploiting the holes in the rules for tourist visas, and essentially settled into ordinary life, renting cars, opening bank accounts and taking flying lessons. On Sept. 11, this gang hijacked four commercial jetliners, crashing two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, another into the Pentagon in Northern Virginia and a fourth into a farm field in Pennsylvania.

If you stop and think about how 19 men who barely spoke English could manage to live just fine in a strange country before carrying out a complicated terrorist operation, you have to ask: Did anyone help them?

That simple question is the essential fuel behind the quest to determine whether Saudi officials may have provided aid to the hijackers — with money, with references to rent apartments, even with language lessons. 

At the center of this story are two hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — who made their way from Southern California to northern New Jersey in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Neither al-Mihdhar nor al-Hazmi spoke English. But somehow they managed to rent an apartment in Southern California, then rent a Toyota Corolla and drive all the way to South Hackensack, where they checked into a motel on Route 46.

It turns out that at least two Saudi officials with links to their government’s intelligences network helped al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in California. We already know this. But few investigators believe that is the end of Saudi involvement.  

The story of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi was documented in the 2004 report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — the 9/11 Commission — which was led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean. But other stories have since emerged that offer credence to the belief that Saudi officials played a key role in helping the hijackers.

What about the U.S. government?

You would think the U.S. government would want to tell its citizens about this sordid conspiracy involving the Saudis, especially after some 10,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives signed on to a massive federal lawsuit to hold the Saudis accountable. Think again. The FBI has behaved like the old Soviet KGB, blocking access by lawyers in the lawsuit to information and clamping down on even the most ordinary facts.

Will that change?

The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations blocked attempts to open the FBI’s books, claiming that the release of information on the Saudis — believed to be thousands of pages — would compromise national security.  President Joe Biden is now feeling the pressure, along with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

So far, neither Biden nor Garland have budged. Nor have they even addressed the issue in a substantial way. 

With the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, Biden and Garland will surely have to speak up. And Congress may push them too.

Earlier this week, a group of 22 Congressional members sent a letter to Garland demanding the FBI files. The group included both U.S. senators from New Jersey, Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, along with Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand from New York. Also signing the letter were four House members from New Jersey — Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill, Tom Malinowski and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

What was notable was the lone Republican signee — Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island. In April, Malliotakis joined four other GOP House members in demanding the FBI files.

This is not exactly evidence of a bipartisan wave. Frankly, Malliotakis would have looked clueless and irresponsible if she did not join the 21 other Democrats in this week’s letter. Her district lost many residents in the 9/11 attacks. 

But these small efforts may be the first seeds of a bipartisan push that could grow as we approach the upcoming 20th anniversary of 9/11.

It’s been too many years that America has awaited the truth about the Saudis.

It’s time for our own government to come clean.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @mikekellycolumn