06/03/15 – Brian McGlinchey – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And next up is our friend Brian McGlinchey from 28pages.org.
Don't spell it out, two eight, 28pages.org.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Hey, it's great to be with you, Scott.
Good to have you here.
Listen, I was thinking of you actually last night because I was reading this thing by Eleanor Clift from the McLaughlin Group and Newsweek here at the Daily Beast, Rand Paul's new crusade, the secret 9-11 docs.
So first of all, for those just tuning in to politics for the first time in their lives, what 28 pages?
What 9-11 docs?
Back in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, most people are familiar with the 9-11 commission but before that, there was a joint congressional intelligence inquiry that looked into the activities of the intelligence community before and after 9-11 and they produced a 838 page document and that was published.
There were words and names and places redacted here and there, but President Bush decided that he needed to completely classify an entire 28 page chapter that is apparently about sources of foreign financial support of the 9-11 terrorists.
Alright now, that's pretty vague, but then again, it's been quite a few years and there have been quite a few leaks.
Can you tell us what you think you know about what's in these 28 pages?
Yes, I'll tell you what Senator Bob Graham tells us.
Senator Graham, former Democrat Senator from Florida, he co-chaired that joint intelligence inquiry and he's been one of the most outspoken in wanting them declassified and he comes right out and says that the 28 pages deal with financial support of the 9-11 terrorists and they point a, quote, very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier, end quote.
Alright now, Greg Pallast actually wrote a thing the other day after it was revealed that Bin Laden had a copy of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which, man, he's got some real scoops in that book, but it was I think a later book he includes this scoop that was on BBC Newsnight in November of 2001 and I've talked with Greg about this before.
Some FBI agents came to him complaining, and they were pretty hot about it, that they had been told to back off the Saudis because the Saudis who the FBI were investigating for connections to terrorism were the same Saudis who were very close friends and business partners with the Bushes and it was an embarrassing thing and so, and these FBI agents told Pallast they didn't think it was because they wanted the attack to happen or anything like that, it was because of those appearances, they just wanted to, hey, you know, you guys back off.
Down the chain of command, that meant to a solid command, stop these investigations.
And then, as corroborating evidence, they showed him a document called 199I, that was basically their permission to go ahead and begin investigating the Saudis again, dated a few days after 9-11.
And so Greg actually just mentioned that again, so.
Yeah, there's anecdote after anecdote of all different manner of situations where people are told to back off or let's not put so much heat on Saudi Arabia.
If you read Philip Sheenan's book, The Commission on the 9-11 Commission, you know, people were startled at the extent to which the Bush administration didn't want, you know, those angles being pursued.
And now we're at a point where with this ongoing war on terror and the decisions about what's going to be done next in the Middle East, we continue to, it seems, turn a blind eye to the source of the problem.
We keep talking about the symptoms and dealing with all that.
But according to Bob Graham again, he says, you know, the suppression of these 28 pages and shielding Saudi Arabia from scrutiny for financing extremism and continuing to export it, it enabled the rise of ISIS and all other types of problems, too.
And so we're not really dealing with that.
Right.
Now, the best article I've read about this, I got to mention, is Daniel Lazar wrote a thing for Bob Perry's site, ConsortiumNews.com, where he really explains in pretty good detail about the relationship between the princes and the religious authorities and the foreign terrorist groups and the financing and this and that.
Certainly worth taking a look at.
But I think it's already a proven fact in the documents, isn't it, that Prince Bandar's wife sent money, I believe, approximately one hundred thousand dollars or something like that to, I think, directly to the guys in San Diego or to a relation of the guys in San Diego?
Indirectly, I think, through Omar Bayoumi out there.
Right.
So, in other words, and of course, then there's the story that Bob Graham says, you know, and he was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Correct me if I'm wrong about that.
That's right.
I believe he was.
And he said, you know what?
The FBI never told us about this house full of Saudi royals in Florida that, you know, was obviously a huge anecdote in this story, a huge part of this, well, a very important lead anyway, that some of the hijackers apparently were tied to this house and that the very rich and powerful Saudis who had been living in that house left, obviously, in a hurry with a car, a brand new car in the driveway and dinner on the table and all this kind of thing, left all their possessions behind and fled the country before the attack.
And the FBI had kept that from Bob Graham.
I mean, that alone has got to be a huge scandal just by itself.
But anyway, so now the news, which is what?
Well, up to this point, the charge to declassify these 28 pages has been led in the House of Representatives by Congressman Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massey.
And they have for the past year and a half been looking for a Senate counterpart to help you take up the charge there.
And their ship came in, Rand Paul, along with Ron Wyden and Kirsten Gillibrand yesterday introduced a Senate bill that would, by its language, require President Obama to declassify these 28 pages.
So it's a huge step forward in terms of the profile of this issue, especially where you have a somebody with a spotlight like Rand Paul on the on that case.
Yeah, yeah, that's a huge thing.
And, you know, as we can see, here's a story in The Daily Beast about it and this kind of thing.
And, you know, anybody asks any questions, good ones or not about 9-11 is usually smeared as truth or nonsense.
But then again, we're talking about 28 blacked out pages of a joint House Senate report.
We all know, as you said, what the subject matter is and not the details.
And there's just kind of no denying it as long as it's being brought up by these powerful and prominent senators.
It's important news right there.
And now.
So the question is for you and your judgment of watching what's going on up there.
Do you think there's much momentum that this could this could really be the make or break and you think it'll make or where are we at here?
I think, I mean, a critical driver of additional momentum.
I think 9-11 family members have been pursuing this for years and years, and they're probably heartened to think that, wow, we've got yet a surge in interest on this and high profile interest.
There's a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that's in progress right now.
There is a mandatory declassification review process that's been initiated by Dan Christensen at the Florida Bulldog.
He's the one who's been so good about investigating that Sarasota cell that you were talking about.
So we've got a lot of avenues pointing at it now, a lot of increasing pressure.
And I'm looking for help and we're all looking for help on this in terms of calling senators and giving them a hard time on this and telling them to co-sponsor this bill, which is Senate Bill 1471.
Just to give a quick phone number to the House switchboard, it's 202-224-3121.
A lot of these people have not even bothered reading the 28 pages.
Right.
It's sitting right there for them to read and they don't even care enough.
But then again, you know, yeah, like you say, if we could just get them to read the thing, judging from the comments of some of the congressmen who have, they'll be animated about it.
So there you go again, 202-224-3121.
Call and harass your congressmen and senators about this.
You say it's HR 1471, is that right?
On the Senate side, it's Senate Bill 1471.
On the House side, it's House Resolution 14.
Yeah.
Tell us about how Rand, Paul and them in the Senate are going about trying to actually get this thing through here.
That is an important point.
Yeah.
Last week, you know, we knew that they were going to be introducing this bill, but at the press conference yesterday in Capitol Hill, the surprise twist came when Senator Paul said he was going to add this language as an amendment to next week's defense authorization bill.
So whereas before we've been kind of plodding along trying to get support of these resolution one by one, now we've got something that's going to force at least some sort of action or debate or, you know, showdown procedurally, if nothing else, in the Senate chamber.
Yeah.
Now, that's interesting.
Now, does it take, do you know the rules of order of the Senate any better than me?
Is it going to take 60 votes to do that or just 50?
I don't know exactly what.
Now, there's an interesting history to this because Senator Byron Dorgan back in 2003 attempted to do the same thing, attach language urging the declassification of the 28 pages to a bill.
And he was shot down twice on procedural objections.
And guess who was shooting him down?
None other than Mitch McConnell.
Who, you know, I think that could mean then that, and maybe this is what you're trying to say, that, hey, maybe it'll be okay this time because Rand and Mitch McConnell work pretty well together.
McConnell has endorsed him and Rand has cultivated him this whole time, really.
Well, it's interesting because that's my optimistic side.
But then the other side says, well, Rand just thwarted McConnell's Patriot Act extension in dramatic, high-profile fashion.
So we'll have to see how that plays out.
Yeah.
You know what?
I'm just making up stuff.
But I think Rand must have said to him behind the curtain that, hey, listen, we're going to fight about this, but I still love you or whatever kind of thing.
Right.
They didn't really get into a personal fight over the Patriot Act.
It didn't seem that way at all.
It didn't seem that way.
Yeah, I think, you know, it was, we're going to go out there and we're going to take our opposite sides.
But I think that they're probably still friends and that that went over okay, you know, at the end of the day.
I hope so.
Certainly for the sake of, you know, this particular thing.
And, you know, again, Rand Paul doing the right thing.
And I don't know if this is the kind of thing that'll get him attacked by the war party.
It's kind of hard for anybody to attack somebody for wanting to release these pages at this point, right?
You don't have or I don't know, but is even the Weekly Standard saying, oh, no, you'll reveal precious sources and methods at this point?
Or is it just, you know, I mean, you just don't have the momentum enough yet.
But there's nobody really standing against the declassification.
I mean, other than the national security state itself.
Am I right?
Right.
Yeah.
The opponents of this are all behind closed doors.
There's no vocal advocate out there demanding that they stay shut.
The American Enterprise Institute had a piece a few months back by one of their writers.
And I can't remember his name, but he's a he's actually a veteran of the, I think, Office of Special Plans from the 2000, the Iraq war.
I mean, he, of all people, was arguing that, hey, these 20 pages should come out and we should make it a campaign issue during the upcoming presidential race.
So that's a good sign as well.
I don't know, man, that's kind of scary, because I wouldn't want to see the agenda switch to to let's, you know, demonize and go after maybe even getting a war with the Saudis.
I guess we can't expect them to align that tightly with Iran at this point, can we?
Especially now, Jeb.
Well, and looking at it as a potential presidential issue, you've got, you know, people have said that this could be very embarrassing to the Bush administration, because it will paint the ties and the fact that what did the Bush administration decide to conceal from the American public?
If it actually does, as Senator Graham say, point to Saudi Arabia.
And so it could be some, you know, a decrease in the goodwill of the Bush name as that name is, you know, in the race for the presidential nomination.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem pretty obvious, or at least it's the most obvious interpretation for the media would be, oh, well, you know, Bandar and Bush are close.
There's Bandar smoking cigars with Bush on the White House balcony just a couple of days.
I guess they probably won't want to get into all that.
But ultimately, I think this is about if Thomas Massie made the point that every day Congress is making decisions about what do we do in this war on terror?
How do we prevent the next 9-11?
Do we need to vacuum up every American citizen's personal information?
Do we need to be intervening overseas?
He says all the while, some of the best intelligence we have on this topic is in these 28 pages.
And most people on Capitol haven't even bothered reading it and that they're pretending to be informed on this topic and making some very critical decisions without complete information.
That's, to me, what this issue is really about.
Yeah, you know, absolutely.
That's the huge flaw in having such secrecy, especially surrounding such important, you know, history altering policies.
None of these guys know what they're talking about.
We're in a giant, well, not we are, but the U.S. started and now there is in the Middle East right now a massive civil war between, you know, a proxy war really between Tehran and Riyadh.
And America is fighting on both sides of the dang thing.
And we have the leaders of the war party are on the Israeli side, i.e., the Saudi side, the Sunni side against the Iranians as though the Iranians are the greater threat when it was al-Qaeda that attacked us.
And as it seems to be implied here, virtually at least the state of Saudi Arabia that attacked us.
And yet we've been fighting for our one group of enemies and calling them our friends while we're fighting for our other group of enemies and calling them our enemies, but fighting for them anyway.
And all this madness, anyway, like you're saying, as mad as it is, we'd have a lot more clarity about who's who and why it is our government is doing what it's doing or what it should be doing if we had answers to some of these questions, you know?
That's right.
And that's the point Senator Graham's making is that, you know, this is a republic.
And in a republic, you know, the will of the people is based on them being an informed people and able to supervise the actions of their government.
Right.
In fact, you know, I read a thing the other day where it was in the National Review where the guy was saying Rand Paul was right about something.
I don't know what was the connection.
And then trying to spin it all because Iran is behind al-Qaeda and always has been.
What?
Oh, man, the kinds of spin that they can get away with.
And you know what?
Rand has done this too, complaining and saying the enemy is radical Islam and not trying to differentiate when we have the Islamic Republic and Iran locked in a war right now with the Islamic State in Iraq.
And and and, you know, they want to conflate those things together when, in fact, they're all quite different.
So, yeah, I don't know.
Certainly would be interesting to see if this stuff did come out, Brian, just how much the narrative would have to change as far as TV goes and as far as our politicians go.
But I think we do owe a great credit to Senator Paul for taking the lead on this issue, because bringing up 9-11 can be a risky issue for politicians because there are so many people who falsely attribute bringing that up to being a fringe topic when, no, it actually goes to the very core of the war on terror and our conduct of our foreign policy.
So he on this one, he put himself out there.
And so I think on this issue, we need to be grateful.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
And and of course, you know, he's got the great argument, which is, hey, this is what the House and Senate staff wrote about what the CIA and the FBI told them.
So, you know, sorry, but this is the this is our our government intelligence and police agency's official position on the truth of that matter.
And the American people deserve it.
There's not much of an argument to have the other way, you know.
Now, as he pursues his bill, it'll be interesting.
Back in 2003, 46 senators sent a letter to George W. Bush demanding that the 28 pages be released.
Eleven of them are still around.
One of them is Wyden.
He's on board.
But we'll have to see whether these other 11 sign on to this bill.
Oh, yeah.
You said Charles Schumer was one of those, right?
Exactly.
Charles Schumer actually led the case, you know, was very vocal, very strident in saying these need to come out.
And until we do, we're not going to be able to change the behavior of those people who are supporting terrorism.
So we'll see if these people are consistent on principle and step behind.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
Just you were talking about Charles Schumer, right?
Yeah, right.
And that we'll see if he's consistent and others are consistent on principle.
And, you know, they demanded it from President Bush.
They should also be demanding it from President Obama.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think it's great work that you're doing here and trying to get people to focus on this issue.
And you've really had a hell of a lot of success so far in getting this ball rolling and continuing to push it, too.
So I just want a lot of credit for that.
All credit's really to Congressman Jones, Massey and Lynch.
But I'm just trying to do my best to help facilitate awareness of it and getting people to call that house switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask their senator to support Senate Bill 1471.
All right.
Great.
Senate Bill 1471-202-224-3121.
Thanks again, Brian.
Thanks so much.
All right, y'all.
It's Brian McGlinchey.
He's at 28pages.org.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for Liberty.me, the social network and community-based publishing platform for the Liberty-minded.
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