Showdown Looms Over 9/11/900-page final report/links between foreign governments and the 9/11 hijackers/newsday/May 31

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usinte313309389may31,0,643973.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

Showdown Looms Over 9/11 Reports

By Thomas Frank
WASHINGTON BUREAU

May 31, 2003

Washington - The former Senate intelligence chairman set the stage Friday for a confrontation with the White House over the withholding of sensitive information about intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) vowed to seek a meeting with top administration officials if intelligence agencies did not agree soon to make public vital information unearthed in a congressional probe last year. Graham, a presidential candidate, was co-chairman of the investigation.
The Senate and House intelligence committees, which led the investigation, have been fighting the CIA and other agencies for months over a 900-page final report on the probe. Late Thursday, the agencies gave the intelligence committees' special investigative staff a copy of the staff report noting areas that it would require to remain classified.
The agencies gave some ground in allowing the public release of information that it had previously declared classified, said Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor who led the investigation.
"I sense we have made some progress here. There are clearly some areas that were marked as classified before that are marked as unclassified," Hill said, adding that there were still some disagreements.
Graham was more critical. In a statement, he said the intelligence agencies are completely removing two "key sections" and that "more of the report could be made available to the American people."
Graham did not specify what subjects were blocked. But he has previously criticized the classification of disclosures concerning allegations that foreign governments, notably Saudi Arabia, supported the 19 hijackers while they lived in the United States for more than a year and planned the attack.
Intelligence agencies argue disclosing such information would compromise national security, congressional officials said. In addition, the White House withheld information from Congress about what it knew about terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001.
At a Capitol Hill hearing last week, Graham said, "It is disturbingly apparent that some governments are supporting - or at the very least, providing sanctuary for - terrorist networks."
Graham called on a separate, independent commission investigating all aspects of what allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to "vigorously pursue the links between foreign governments and the 9/11 hijackers." He added, "Ignoring facts simply because they make some people uncomfortable will prevent Americans from learning the full truth about 9/11 and thereby deterring future terrorist attacks."
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said there would be meetings shortly between congressional investigators and intelligence officials to discuss the final report.