On October 31, 2019, Fox News aired a short segment where Tucker Carlson spoke with Chris Ganci and Brett Eagleson who both lost their fathers in the attacks of September 11, 2001.  They discussed the US government’s decision to continue to keep information secret, 18 years after the attacks.  On September 12, 2019 the Department of Justice blocked the release of a 2012 FBI summary report about possible Saudi Arabian ties to the attackers.

Family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks sought the information as part of a long-running lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over allegations of the Kingdom’s involvement in the attacks.

Eagleson states in the interview that the Department of Justice invoked State Secrets Privilege in order to block the public release of the information.  The DOJ cites a reasonable danger that releasing the report risks significant harm to national security as justification for the rare invocation of the privilege.

When asked why he thought the DOJ blocked the release of information, Ganci says he thinks it is about one of two things.  Either they are “covering up their own malfeasance, or they are covering up the complicity of a foreign nation state.  Both of them are equally terrible.”

Saudi Arabia’s possible complicity in the attacks has been reported on numerous times in the years since the attacks.  But the reports are usually provided in a vacuum, with little to no connections that tie the information together into a complete picture.  This makes it all too easy to overlook these individual reports, or to miss their significance.

Similarly, the lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gets little attention in the news.  Unfortunately, it seems to get most attention when it is an issue that can be trotted out for political purposes.  However, Dan Christensen at the Florida Bulldog has done a great job keeping up with the case, as has the website 28pages.org.