Washington // Secret findings of a 2002 US congressional investigation into the September 11 attacks should not be taken as evidence of official Saudi complicity, CIA chief John Brennan said.
A decision is expected soon on whether to release a classified 28-page section of the report by the house and senate intelligence committees. The office of the US director of national intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.
Mr Brennan said he expected the classified section to be released.
“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,” he said in an interview with the Saudi-owned news channel Al Arabiya.
The withheld section is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key US ally, for damages. The senate passed a bill in May allowing the families of September 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.
Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers, most of whom were Saudi citizens, and strongly objects to the bill. Riyadh has said it might sell up to $750 billion in US securities and other American assets if it became law.
Mr Brennan 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,” the CIA chief told Al Arabiya.
“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.
The 9/11 Commission, which was set up by then-president George W Bush, presented its report in 2004.
Mr Brennan added that over the past 15 years the Saudis “have become among our best counterterrorism partners”.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters