Justice Dept. Plans New Review of Privileged Sept. 11 Documents
Tom Ramstack
The Legal Forum, offering legal representation, language translation, media services.
The Justice Department is gearing up for one of the most controversial document review projects in Washington, D.C. history.
Justice Department officials announced last week they would review documents related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that previously were classified as privileged and not publicly available.
The fresh review was prompted by pressure on the Biden administration to determine whether the government of Saudi Arabia played a clandestine role in the attacks. Saudi participation was rumored within weeks after the airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Families of the victims who plan a 20th anniversary ceremony next month wrote a letter to President Joe Biden saying he would not be welcome unless he declassified possible evidence of a Saudi conspiracy.
Biden said during his election campaign that if he became president he would tell the U.S. attorney general to examine whether the federal government properly invoked a state secrets privilege in withholding some Sept. 11 documents.
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Biden added that he would order the attorney general to “err on the side of disclosure in cases where, as here, the events in question occurred two decades or longer ago.”
Most document review projects consist of searches for corporate financial fraud or antitrust violations. The one the Justice Department is planning could rewrite history on the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism.
The victims’ families believe the 9/11 Commission appointed by Congress uncovered evidence of a Saudi conspiracy but covered it up to avoid an embarrassing international incident.
Biden said in a statement last week, “I welcome the Department of Justice’s filing today, which commits to conducting a fresh review of documents where the government has previously asserted privileges, and to doing so as quickly as possible.”
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