As former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel works to get an initiative calling for a new investigation of the events of Sept. 11 passed in Massachusetts (“A Deeper Inquiry,” September 29, 2011), revelations from Florida add another mystery to the pile of unanswered questions about the attacks of that day.
The recently reported information, researched by investigative reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen and published by the Miami Herald and BrowardBulldog.org, concerns a house in Sarasota occupied before 9/11 by a Saudi couple named al-Hiijii; the wife was the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, a wealthy Saudi with deep family connections to Saudi elites and a long history of residence in the U.S. Telephone records link the family to 12 of the hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader of the hijackers and pilot of the plane that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And the log from the guard house in Prestancia, the gated community in which the house is located, details times when a vehicle licensed to Atta entered the subdivision.
The house was abandoned less than two weeks before 9/11—vacated so suddenly that the pool pump was still running and food was left on the counter in the kitchen.
Last month, the FBI said that it had investigated the family and that its findings were “determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot.” The agency also claimed that all information related to the 9/11 investigation had been turned over to the congressional Joint Inquiry charged in 2002 with examining the events of that day.
But Sen. Bob Graham, now retired but then co-chair of the Inquiry, said it was given no information about the family in Sarasota. Graham now says the Obama administration should make that information public, and that more detailed investigations should be carried out in all American towns where the highjackers were known to be living before Sept. 11.
Graham also says the last section of the Joint Inquiry’s report, which dealt with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers,” should be made available to the public. That section was redacted by order of the Bush administration, and is still inaccessible, though Graham and the Republican co-chair of the Joint Inquiry, Richard Shelby, agreed that releasing the contents would not threaten the national security.
