Link To 9/11 Hijackers Found In Sarasota

Judge waits for FBI's Sarasota Saudi documents

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...audi-documents

By Michael Pollick
Published: Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 10:16 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 10:16 a.m.

Relatives of 9/11 victims are eagerly watching the legal struggle over information held by the FBI concerning a Saudi Arabian family in Sarasota with possible ties to terrorists, even as calls in Congress ramp up for more disclosure about how the attackers were funded.

On Friday, a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale is expected to receive FBI documents pertaining to the agency's investigation of the Saudi family that abruptly left Sarasota just before the September 2001 attacks.

This month, the judge ordered the FBI to turn over the materials as part of a lawsuit by a South Florida news organization that has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald.

In his blistering 23-page order, the judge scolded the FBI for failing to conduct a comprehensive search initially for documents stemming from its investigation.

“Defendants' eagerness to assert exemptions and wooden method of interpreting Plaintiffs' (Freedom of Information Act) requests essentially deprives the Court of its role in examining any relevant documents and independently determining whether any exemptions may apply,” U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch wrote of the FBI, the defendant in the case.

Zloch ordered a more exhaustive new search, with the resulting documents to be delivered — uncensored — to him for review Friday. Additional documentation is due in June.

Family members have strongly denied any ties to the 9/11 terrorists.

If the judge eventually makes those documents public, the 16-month-old lawsuit could dovetail with a larger effort to shed more light on who financed the jet attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

One effort is centered in New York federal court, where a 12-year-old case seeks $1 trillion in damages for the relatives of nearly 10,000 9/11 victims.

In that case, families are attempting to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and charities that it established.

In Congress, meanwhile, there is a growing drumbeat to make public a censored 28-page chapter about the terrorists' financing, pulled by unnamed government censors from the report of the “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001.” The joint Congressional report, minus the censored chapter, runs about 800 pages and was published in late 2002.

The classified section is believed by activists to be based on FBI and CIA documents, and to point fingers at Saudi Arabia, a longtime ally of the United States and a key oil supplier.

“It all ties together about financing power, leading back to the Saudis,” said Bill Doyle, a retired stockbroker who lives in the Central Florida community of The Villages, and whose youngest son, Joseph, died after being trapped in the World Trade Center.

Doyle is among the lead plaintiffs in one of three lawsuits against Saudi Arabia that have been combined into a single federal court action entitled “In Re: Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (Saudi Arabia et al.)”

He said he also believes the Sarasota connection — in which a Saudi family abruptly departed the U.S. two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind many possessions — could answer questions about larger issues.

“You take off a week or so before 9/11 and go back to Saudi Arabia and leave dirty diapers, food, two brand- new cars and a house. And there is also evidence that some of the people who were training over at Huffman Aviation in Venice were visiting their house,” Doyle said.

“It all ties together.”

Saudi Arabia arguments
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will likely soon decide if it will hear arguments from the kingdom's attorneys, who want their client removed as a defendant.

If successful, it would mark the second time that those lawyers have convinced a court to drop Saudi Arabia as a defendant.

In the first case, they argued that U.S. law does not allow suits against sovereign nations for damages. But a federal appeals court reversed that decision in December.

“We anticipate hearing from the Supreme Court in late June,” said Robert Haefele, an attorney who represents more than half of the 10,000 plaintiffs in the combined suits.

Sharon Premoli, co-chairwoman of activist group 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism, is also pushing for all FBI documents to be made public.

“The 28 pages are part and parcel of the FBI documents,” said Premoli, who survived the terror attacks and narrowly escaped from the Trade Center's north tower. “It is all one big cover-up.”

Doyle and Premoli's efforts are in sync with those of retired U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry that published the 800-page report. The former Florida governor has battled for years to have the censored chapter about possible terror financing declassified.

Recently, a pair of congressmen have also called on President Barack Obama to declassify the censored pages, and written a form letter to other members of Congress urging them to review the missing chapter.

“The information contained in the redacted pages is critical to U.S. foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American people,” said Rep. Walter Jones Jr., R-North Carolina.

Jones and Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, have also introduced a House resolution to declassify the 28 pages, which has drawn some bipartisan support.

Both had to go through a lengthy process to read the 28 pages, which are kept under tight security, and each was monitored by a federal agent making sure that notes were not taken and the pages were not copied or removed.

President Obama has publicly promised to make the chapter public, but thus far has not done so.

“We have a burning question,” Premoli said. “We would like to know if President Obama has read the 28 pages.”

Local connections to 9/11
What already is clear — and has been since shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — is that three of the 9/11 terrorists paid for flight training at Venice Airport.

Unclear is how they paid for that training and other activities.

The terror cell living in Sarasota County was one of a number scattered around the nation. Others are known to have existed in Los Angeles and San Diego, and in Falls Church, Va.

In the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Fort Lauderdale's Broward Bulldog — joined as “friends of the court” by the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald — the Justice Department acknowledged that it has tens of thousands of documents related to the Southwest Florida portion of its overall 9/11 investigation.

To date, the Bulldog and its media partners have received 35 heavily redacted pages.

In a 10th anniversary story by the Broward Bulldog published in the Herald-Tribune and Miami Herald, the Fort Lauderdale news organization claimed that the same terrorists who trained in Venice visited a home in the gated Prestancia community owned by Saudi businessman, Esam Ghazzawi, who had close ties to the Saudi royal family.

For six years prior to 9/11, the home was occupied by Ghazzawi's daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulazziz al Hijji. “Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers,” the Bulldog reported.

The FBI initially refused a Bulldog request to search for the family's names in its archives, claiming that would amount to an invasion of privacy.

In his early April order, Judge Zloch described the FBI's initial search as “preemptively narrowed in scope based on agency decisions that categories of documents are exempt, and thus, will not even be sought.”

Zloch then ordered the agency to use its most advanced document search system, and provided specific search terms — including the family's names — that the FBI was required to use.

The Reagan appointee and former Notre Dame quarterback also ordered the original uncensored documents to be delivered to him for private review.

That is known in legal terms as “in camera.”

Judge grants FBI more time to gather Sarasota 9/11 documents

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...9-11-documents

By Michael Pollick
Published: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 4:23 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 4:23 p.m.

A federal judge has granted the FBI additional time to process records sought by the media concerning a Saudi Arabian family in Sarasota that hastily departed the United States in the days before the 9/11 attacks.

The documents had been due to the judge for review on Friday but late Thursday, the government asked for more time. The assistant U.S. attorney representing the FBI and Justice Department said the materials that need to be searched comprise 23 boxes and 92,000 pages at the agency’s Tampa field office — some of which carry a “secret” classification.

U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch gave the agency until April 25 to produce photocopies of the documents.

The FBI had sought to substitute “digitized” versions of the documents on a CD to the judge on May 2. Judge Zloch said he was willing to wait that long for the digital version in a searchable format but still wanted hard copies by late next week.

The judge had ordered the FBI to turn over the materials as part of a lawsuit filed by the South Florida news organization Broward Bulldog that has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald as “friends of the court.”

Judge Zloch had previously scolded the FBI for failing to initially conduct a comprehensive search for documents stemming from its investigation. Earlier this month, he ordered a new and more exhaustive search, with the resulting documents to be delivered — uncensored — to him.

The judge said the FBI must comply using its most advanced document search system, called Sentinel, to search for records pertaining to the year-and-a-half old Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Broward Bulldog.

Under the judge’s order, the FBI also must search for documents related to the Saudi family, a home in Sarasota’s gated Prestancia subdivision and the investigation following the 2001 attacks using Sentinel and multiple other search systems.

The agency initially refused to search for the family’s names, claiming that would result in an invasion of privacy. The judge said he plans to deal with the privacy issue after he has seen the documents.

Judge Zloch ordered the FBI to also inform the court of any documented communications between it and other government agencies concerning the investigation. That information, and an explanation of how the FBI is complying with the judge’s order, is due by June 6.

In joining the case in mid-March, the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald cited articles written about the Prestancia case and described ways in which a further search would be in the public’s interest.

To date, the FBI has turned over 35 pages of heavily redacted documents — out of the tens of thousands it has acknowledged were part of its Florida inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.

The home in Sarasota was owned by Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi and his wife, Deborah. Ghazzawi is known to have connections to the Saudi royal family.

For the six years before the terror attacks, the home was occupied by their son-in-law, Abdulaziz Al-Hijji, and their daughter, Anoud.

The Al-Hijjis came to the FBI’s attention after the couple apparently returned abruptly to Saudi Arabia two weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., leaving behind clothes, food, children’s toys and cars.

Federal agents also linked phone calls from the Prestancia home — some dating to a year before the attacks — to known 9/11 suspects, the Bulldog has reported. The calls were made to, or received from Mohamed Atta, fellow pilots and 11 other terrorist suspects, the Bulldog reported. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had learned to fly at the former Huffman Aviation at the Venice Municipal Airport. Ziad Jarrah also took flying lessons nearby, at the Florida Flight Training school.

Family members have denied any relationship with the terrorists.

FBI’s attempt to water down judicial order denied; 9/11 documents begin to flow to judge

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/0...types=og.likes

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

A Fort Lauderdale federal judge Friday gave the FBI another week to produce tens of thousands of pages from its massive 9/11 investigation for his inspection, but forcefully denied government requests that he water down his own previous order requiring disclosure.

Hours after the order was filed, a government lawyer filed court papers saying the Justice Department had delivered “27 pages of classified material” to the court for the judge’s private, or “in camera,” inspection.

The legal developments are among a flurry of recent activity in the Freedom of Information case that was filed by BrowardBulldog.org in 2012. The suit seeks records from a once secret FBI investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota.

“What’s important here is that the Justice Department was seeking wholesale reconsideration of the prior order and the judge instead issued a stern rejection of the idea that he undo what he had previously ordered,” said the Bulldog’s Miami attorney, Thomas Julin.

The investigation focused on a Saudi family with ties to the Royal family and apparent connections to some of the 9/11 hijackers and another terrorist figure who once lived in Broward. The investigation began after Abdulaziz al Hijji and his wife, Anoud, abruptly moved out of their upscale home in a gated community about two weeks before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing and food in the kitchen.

NEIGHBORS CALL THE AUTHORITIES
Suspicious neighbors summoned authorities starting the day of the attacks. Sources have said agents later found evidence that 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, several other hijackers and former Miramar resident Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al Hijji’s home. Shukrijumah is now believed to be an al Qaeda leader and is wanted by the FBI.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records obtained by BrowardBulldog.org show the FBI continued to investigate al-Hijji until at least 2004. Yet the Bureau never disclosed the existence of the Sarasota probe to either Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11, or the subsequent 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry.

On April 4, U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a thorough search of its records for documents responsive to the news organization’s Freedom of Information request and produce photocopies to him by April 18. The order informed the FBI that it had failed to convince him that its prior records searches were adequate under the law.

The order included specific instructions to the FBI as to how it is to conduct the latest search, from requiring it to search using its new $440 million Sentinel case management system down to the names and words that are to be used in text searches.

Sen. Graham applauded Zloch’s order, saying it gave “a strong, clear directive to the FBI. He called it “the closest in 12 years that we’ve been to achieving” the release of government information that might shed new light on who was behind the terrorist attacks.

But the government pushed back.

GOVERNMENT SEEKS MORE TIME, LESS REQUIREMENTS
On Thursday, Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee filed a motion seeking a two-week delay – until May 2 – to turn over what he estimates is 92,000 pages of 9/11 records from the FBI’s Tampa field office.

Lee also told Zloch the FBI was scanning each of those pages, which fill 23 boxes and include some records labeled secret, and asked for permission “to deliver the Tampa (9/11) sub file to the court in a searchable CD format, in lieu of photocopies.”

The judge, however, signaled that he won’t tolerate much delay. He granted just a one-week extension of his deadline and told the government it must produce both the photocopies and the digitized version of the records in searchable format. He gave the FBI until May 2 to turn over the digitized records.

Zloch denied outright the government’s request that it not be required to conduct a manual search of its records. Lee had proposed instead that the government be allowed to use an optical character reader to search the newly digitized records.

“Defendants may employ the OCR search capability, but not as a substitute for the manual review ordered by the court,” the judge’s order said.

Finally, Judge Zloch dismissed the government’s request that he reconsider his prior order directing the FBI to conduct additional text searches using the names of specific individuals, including Abdulaziz al Hijj and his father-in-law Esam Ghazzawi, once an adviser to a Saudi prince and the owner of the home apparently visited by the hijackers.

The government has contended the privacy interests of al Hijji, Ghazzawi and others outweigh the public’s interest in disclosure of records the FBI may have on them.

More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judge

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/3...dentified.html

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
Posted on Wednesday, 04.30.14

Contradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI has identified four more boxes of “classified” 9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office.

The government, however, has yet to comply with a federal judge’s orders Friday that it turn over copies of that massive9/11 file — now said to total 27 boxes — for his personal inspection.

U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch issued those orders in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org seeking records about the FBI’s investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota.

In an email to the news organization’s attorney, Thomas Julin, Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee said the government was prepared to file the documents with the court last Friday “as ordered.” The Justice Department, however, determined that Zloch’s chambers do not have a safe with “storage capability for classified documents.”

“The plan at present is to deliver the safe [which can hold four boxes] on Thursday, May 1, 2014, along with the first four boxes of classified materials,” Lee said. “When the court has completed its review of the four boxes, chambers will be contacted and I will deliver four more boxes, as well as retrieving the material already reviewed.”

Lee said, too, that he will deliver to the court on Friday CD ROMs containing scanned versions of the classified documents.

POSSIBLE DELAYS
The government’s piecemeal document delivery plan deviates substantially from Zloch’s orders, which require the production of photocopies of the FBI’s entire 9/11Tampa file all at once. If approved, it would delay the production of records to the judge for inspection by weeks or months.

The existence of four additional boxes of 9/11 records could add to any delay.

Lee’s disclosure about the additional four boxes calls into question the accuracy of the sworn declaration submitted to the court two weeks ago by FBI records section chief David M. Hardy.

Hardy told the court that the entire Tampa 9/11 “sub file” was “comprised of 23 boxes of records” including “a substantial, but undetermined amount of material classified at the ‘secret’ level.” Prosecutor Lee did not explain why the file is now said to be 27 boxes.

The FBI probe that is the focus of the Freedom of Information lawsuit focused on a Saudi family with ties to the Royal Family and apparent connections to some of the 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, and former Broward resident and currently suspected al Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah.

The investigation began after neighbors in the upscale south Sarasota gated community of Prestancia called authorities to report that Abulaziz al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, had suddenly moved out of their home two weeks before 9/11, leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing and food in the kitchen.

Sources have said agents later found gatehouse logs and photographs of license tags and phone records showing that Atta, Shukrijumah and others had visited the al-Hijji’s home.

Al-Hijji, who later worked for the European subsidiary of the state oil company Saudi Aramco, told London’s Daily Telegraph last year that he condemned the terror attacks and had no involvement in them. The FBI has said publicly that its Sarasota investigation found no evidence connecting the family to either the hijackers or the 9/11 plot.

The FBI, however, kept the investigation secret until BrowardBulldog.org first disclosed it in September 2011.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has said that the FBI did not disclose the existence of the Sarasota investigation to either the Joint Inquiry or the subsequent 9/11 Commission.

The FOIA lawsuit was filed in September 2012 after the FBI denied administrative requests for the release of its records about the matter. In March 2013, the government unexpectedly released more than two-dozen heavily censored records that nevertheless undercut the bureau’s previous public denials.

The documents state that the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” One document lists three individuals, with names blacked out, and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.

Last week, the government provided 27 pages of classified documents to Judge Zloch that bear the blanked-out case number affixed to the April 16, 2002 FBI report disclosing the family’s “many connections” to terrorists.

The judge’s order directs the government to immediately produce any documents responsive to the news organization’s Freedom of Information request. Attorney Julin has asked the government to say whether any of those 27 pages are responsive and nonexempt, and if so to make them public.

The prosecutor said he’s working with the FBI to respond to Julin’s inquiry.

Attorney says four more boxes of records tied to Saudis found

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...o-Saudis-found

Published: Thursday, May 1, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 11:50 p.m.

An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department reversed sworn court testimony by stating that the FBI had recently identified four previously unknown boxes of potentially relevant documents.

Previously, in a lawsuit against the agency brought by news organization the Broward Bulldog and its editor, Dan Christensen, it was asserted that only a limited number of documents pertaining to the Saudi family and Sarasota existed.

Attorney Dexter Lee also appeared to countermand a federal judge's order that all known materials -- now 27 boxes of documents -- be delivered to the federal court in Fort Lauderdale by last Friday.

Judge William Zloch ordered the FBI to deliver the documents after granting the agency an extension to comply with a ruling to turn over all relevant materials in the case.

But the Justice Department waited until Wednesday -- five days after that deadline -- to inform the Bulldog's attorney that it intends to deliver the documents to the judge piecemeal, and only after a secure safe is installed in the judge's chambers.

The Bulldog's attorney, Tom Julin, said he received word from Lee via email.

"One can imagine many scenarios that would pose difficulties," said Julin. "They are giving him a safe that only holds four boxes. What they are saying is, once he has notified us that he has reviewed the four, we will take those back and give him a fresh four."

In joining the case in mid-March, the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald cited articles written about the family and their home in the Prestancia neighborhood of Sarasota, and how additional information about them would serve the public interest.

To date, the FBI has turned over 35 pages of heavily redacted documents in the lawsuit -- out of tens of thousands of pages it acknowledges were part of its Florida inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.

On April 18, the agency turned over another 27 pages for the judge alone to view -- documents that were determined by the FBI to be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests and the Bulldog lawsuit.

Many of the documents are thought to contain information about the Prestancia home, which was then owned by Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi and his wife, Deborah.

Ghazzawi is known to have connections to the Saudi royal family.

For the six years before 9/11, the home was occupied by their son-in-law, Abdulaziz Al-Hijji, and their daughter, Anoud.

The Al-Hijjis came to the FBI's attention after the couple returned abruptly to Saudi Arabia two weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., leaving behind clothes, food, children's toys and cars.

Federal agents also linked phone calls from the Prestancia home -- some dating back a year before the attacks -- to known 9/11 suspects, the Bulldog has reported.

The calls were made to, or received from, alleged terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta and 11 other terrorist suspects, the Bulldog reported.

Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had learned to fly at the former Huffman Aviation flight school at the Venice Municipal Airport.

Terrorist Ziad Jarrah also took flying lessons nearby, at the Florida Flight Training school.

Al-Hijji family members have denied any relationship to the terrorists.

Keeping the FBI honest
Judge wisely cautious about documents on Sarasota Saudi family

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...the-FBI-honest

Published: Thursday, May 1, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 6:34 p.m.

A federal judge recently gave the FBI more time to submit records related to a Saudi family's mysterious departure from Sarasota two weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But, to his credit, Judge William Zloch did not cut the agency any slack.

Zloch, a district the Southern District judge denied the FBI's request to turn over records only in their electronic form.

The Southern District judge preserved his order that the FBI produce, for his inspection, records in a digitized, searchable format. He also demanded that the agency submit, for the court's review, "hard copies" of the documents.

Good, sharp decision.

The FBI had proposed, according to Herald-Tribune reporter Michael Pollick, to send the hard-copy records to an unidentified location in Virginia for transformation into a digital format. However, Zloch wisely required the agency to provide him copies of the originals -- perhaps, we suspect, to ensure that all of them are included in the digitized format.

In other words, the judge took a prudent step to ensure that records -- which he previously deemed "incomplete" -- didn't become even less complete in digital format.

Records with 'gaps'
According to the court's docket, the FBI delivered 27 pages of records, in hard-copy form, on April 28. The FBI has until Friday to provide the digitized versions.

After the records are received by the court, Zloch will review them privately to determine if they are exempt, by law, from public disclosure.

The judge's skepticism of the FBI's willingness to comply with his orders and his insistence that the agency turn over records in multiple forms is warranted. As we noted in an earlier editorial, Zloch determined that the FBI previously:

• Provided records with "apparent" and unexplained chronological "gaps."

• Presented to the court documents that "seem incomplete."

• Submitted "summary documents" that "do in fact seem to contradict each other."

Zloch has steadily sought to require the FBI to adequately search for, find and release to the court documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In September 2011, two independent reporters writing for BrowardBulldog.org wrote that a family from Saudi Arabia, who lived in Sarasota County's prestigious Prestancia development prior to September 2001, had connections with individuals associated with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

The report, reprinted three years ago by the Herald-Tribune, cited documents showing phone calls to the house were made by hijackers who trained in Venice to fly airplanes.

The report also said the family was visited by people using a car licensed to Mohammed Atta -- who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

Agency's credibility in question
Judge Zloch, a Reagan appointee, has repeatedly ruled that the FBI is not complying with the Freedom of Information Act. The "gaps and consistencies" in documents provided to the court "underscore the need for a more thorough search," Zloch wrote in an order issued April 18.

The FBI has maintained that the family was not "related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot." Yet neither the FBI nor anyone else has explained why the family, closely related to a prominent Saudi financier, abruptly left its Prestancia home two weeks before 9/11 -- leaving clothes in closets, food in the refrigerator and three cars in the driveway and garage.

The agency's credibility in this matter is not helped by the fact that its investigation of the family was not reported to Congress or mentioned in the independent 9/11 Commission report.

It can be said that the Herald-Tribune has a dog in this hunt. Halifax Media Holdings, which includes the Herald-Tribune, and the Miami Herald have filed "friend of the court" briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

Zloch has emphasized that the efficacy of the investigation is not the matter before his court. The focus is, he wrote, on whether the FBI has submitted the documents required by federal law.

We'll soon learn, based on Zloch's actions so far, whether the FBI considers itself above -- or subject to -- the law.

Documents cite ‘many connections’ between 9/11 figures, Florida family

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/0...types=og.likes

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org

The Justice Department Friday made public four new, heavily censored documents confirming that by 2002 the FBI had found “many connections” between 9/11 terrorist figures and the Florida family of “an allegedly wealthy international businessman” with ties to the Saudi Royal family.

“On or about 8/27/01 his family fled their house in Sarasota leaving behind valuable items in a manner indicating they left quickly without prior preparation,” says an FBI “case narrative” written on April 16, 2002.

The name of the international businessman, Esam Ghazzawi, is blanked out in the narrative. Ghazzawi’s name, however, is included on another page — an FBI form that accompanied a letter acquired by FBI agents in Tampa as “evidence” in July 2002. Details about the letter were not released.

The release of Ghazzawi’s name is the first time the government has confirmed Ghazzawi’s involvement in the FBI investigation that lasted until at least 2004, yet was never disclosed to the 9/11 Commission or congressional investigators.

Ghazzawi, advisor to a senior Saudi prince, owned the upscale south Sarasota home where his daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulaziz al-Hijji lived prior to 9/11. Law enforcement sources have said that after 9/11 investigators found evidence — telephone records and photographs of license tags and security gate log books — showing that hijack pilot Mohamed Atta, former Broward resident and fugitive al Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah and other terror suspects had visited the home. The home is about 10 miles from the Venice airport, where Atta and the two other hijack pilots trained.

The four pages were released amid ongoing Freedom of Information litigation brought by BrowardBulldog.org after the FBI declined to release any records about the matter.

In April, Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a thorough search of its records to identify documents about the once-secret probe. The judge said the Justice Department had failed to convince him that the FBI’s prior searches had been adequate.

With Friday’s action, a total of 39 pages have been released since the lawsuit was filed in September 2012. That includes four pages that were censored in their entirety.

The FBI withheld certain information from the just-released documents, saying disclosure would constitute “an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” or reveal techniques and procedures of law enforcement.

The four pages released Friday were all declassified shortly before their release.

FBI records chief David M. Hardy said in a declaration under oath that the bureau has processed the Tampa field office’s complete “sub file” on 9/11 and is in the process of turning it over to the judge as ordered. Hardy said the file consists of 80,266 pages, divided into 411 “individual documents sections,” burned onto three CDs in a searchable format.

The documents, and parallel hard copies, were provided for Judge Zloch’s private inspection. He will then decide whether any of those documents are releasable under the Freedom of Information Act.

Judge peruses Southwest Florida's 9/11 secrets

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...9708?p=1&tc=pg

By Michael Pollick
michael.pollick@heraldtribune.com
Published: Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 6:04 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 6:04 p.m.

The FBI is so concerned about keeping “Secret” 9/11 documents just that — a tighly held secret —that it pushed last month to have a special safe installed in a federal judge’s chambers.

The agency pressed for U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch to install the special vault to keep some delicate materials under wraps: the 80,266 pages of investigative material into a Saudi family that left Sarasota abruptly before 9/11.

The vault idea was a step beyond the already-tight security at the Tampa federal courthouse.

The FBI’s Tampa field office had stamped the documents — supposedly that office’s entire file of investigations into the terror attacks — as classified and “Secret” shortly after its investigation concluded.

“The file itself, as received, was classified at the ‘Secret’ level as it contains classified material at the ‘Secret’ level interspersed throughout,” David M. Hardy, an FBI section chief in charge of records management in Winchester, Virginia, wrote to the judge on May 9.

The Fort Lauderdale news organization Broward Bulldog has been battling the FBI and the Justice Department in federal court to get access to the documents on that Sarasota family, along with materials on related investigations.

The Bulldog has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald as so-called “friends of the court.” The two papers have emphasized that there is a compelling public interest in gaining more clarity on exactly what federal investigators discovered in Southwest Florida. The region was, among other things, the site of flight training by 9/11 hijackers.

Underlying the delivery of the documents and the supposed need for a vault to keep them secure is a larger issue about the classification of the material itself: Who can do that, and when?

“One of my concerns about this whole process is how opaque it is,” Bob Graham, a onetime senator, told the Herald-Tribune this past week.

“My experience has been that often classification has more to do with covering up mistakes and avoiding embarrassment than it does with any reasonable definition of national security,” said Graham, who co-chaired a congressional committee that independently investigated the terror attacks.

“Having seen some of the documents now being withheld, I would state with high confidence that they are more likely to have been withheld because of embarrassment at agency actions, rather than any reasonable standard of national security.”

The current system for classifying material was established in 2009 under Executive Order 13526 by President Barack Obama.

It supplanted a series of earlier executive orders on the same topic governing how material can be tagged as secret.

There are a handful of grounds on which the government can classify a document as a matter of national security: by claiming pages contain military plans, foreign government information or “scientific, technological or economic matters relating to national security.”

In the case of the Saudi family and the subsequent FBI inquiry, the agency has said the material relates to “intelligence activities, sources, or methods, or cryptology.”

That could mean the FBI has, or had, an agent or a confidential informant who requires protection, or it could refer to the bureau’s system for detecting patterns in telephone calls.

In the case of the Saudi family, it is believed the 9/11 terrorists phoned the residents of the Sarasota house, located in the Prestancia neighborhood, in the months leading up to 9/11.

The executive order provides the government with immense power to classify what it deems secret without review.

“Typically the ones who have the authority are the ones who have the information,” said Sheryl Shenberger, director of National Archives National Declassification Center in College Park, Maryland.

But there is room for the judiciary to move, too.

“Federal judges do have the authority to order declassification of government documents, but they rarely do it,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

“Usually they just order new reviews, and almost every time there is a new review, plaintiffs get additional documents.”

The lawsuit involving the FBI and the Saudi family began in 2012, after the Bulldog’s Dan Christensen published a story tied to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The bureau and Justice denied the validity of the story, which asserted that the Saudi family in Prestancia was connected to at least three of the terrorists who had trained at Venice Airport to fly planes into the World Trade Center and other targets.

The Bulldog countered with a Freedom of Information Act request for documents from the agency’s analysis. After being told that no documents existed that could be released, the news organization sued the FBI and the Justice Department.

In April, Judge Zloch ordered the FBI to deliver paper files and digital copies to his chambers, to determine if the FBI was satisfying Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Broward Bulldog.

At issue was whether the three 9/11 terrorists who’d received flight training at Venice Airport had a U.S. support system that might have included the Saudi family.

In leaving Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, the family left food in the refrigerator, cars in the driveway, clothes in closets and an open, empty safe.

“In order for the Court to conduct its review in this case, it must know whether such documents exist,” Zloch wrote in an April 4 order.

But Hardy, the FBI’s records section chief, cautioned that much of the material presented to the judge could be classified — based on the agency’s determination.

Personnel in Virginia “took the file as they found it and did not undertake a process to segregate unclassified material from classified material,” Hardy wrote to the judge.

Instead, they divided the pages into 411 document sections. At the beginning of each section they prepared a set of cover sheets to tell the judge which parts were “Secret” and which were unclassified.

Most of the files likely were determined to be classified immediately in the wake of the attacks and subsequent investigation, analysts note. But at least one file that had been deemed classified was declassified in March 2013, five months after the FOIA suit began.

Dated April 16, 2002, the document is marked SECRET at the top, followed by the name of the agency.

At the bottom is a separate coding system that explains when and why it was determined that the document should remain SECRET.

DATE: 03-14-2013

REASON: 1.4(C)

DECLASSIFY ON: 03-14-2038

The 1.4(C) refers to an agency code that pertains to cryptology and other sensitive areas related to national security.

The document was significant, though, because it contradicted the FBI’s assertion that the Bulldog’s Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit was baseless.

“Further investigation of the (redacted) family revealed many connections between the (redacted) and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 09/11/2001,” the document read.

Another declassified document refers to an agency file on Esam Ghazzawi — a highly influential Saudi businessman who owned the Prestancia house. For about six years prior to 9/11, the home had been occupied by his daughter and her husband, Abdulazziz Al-Hijji.

The Al-Hijjis have vehemently denied any involvement with the terrorists.

The Bulldog’s attorney says the murky nature of the classified documents only adds to the intrigue.

“We don’t understand who is classifying these documents,” said Tom Julin, the Miami lawyer representing the Bulldog and Christensen.

“There is no indication of the reason they were classified. It calls into question whether they were properly classified in the first instance.”

Whether the documents were classified properly is critical, because it would give the judge room to ask for further review.

So while Judge Zloch might not declassify “Secret” documents, he could rule the FBI’s decision to classify some documents in error and find that an exemption to keep documents from the public does not apply.

“ ‘I really want the document’ is not a compelling argument,” said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on National Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

“But it looks like the plaintiffs were successful in persuading the judge that he needed to look more closely at the government’s position,” Aftergood said. “And that is already a huge breakthrough.”

Down the rabbit hole with the FBI: Saying 9/11 documents don’t exist when they do

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/0...-when-they-do/

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers, BrowardBulldog.org 9-11

In its only public statements about the Sarasota Saudis who suspiciously quit their home in a gated community in haste two weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind numerous personal belongings — the FBI has said it investigated, but found no connection to the 9/11 plot.

Nearly three years later, however, the FBI has yet to back up its assertions by producing investigative reports written by agents who conducted the probe.

In fact, the few FBI records that have been released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2012 by BrowardBulldog.org flatly contradict the Bureau’s public statements. They say the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to 9/11 terrorist figures – a determination in line with the recollections of a counterterrorism officer with knowledge of the investigation.

The officer, who has asked not to be named, said authorities found gatehouse vehicle and telephone records indicating that Mohamed Atta and other terrorist figures visited the luxury home of Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

KEY RECORDS HAVEN’T SURFACED
The gatehouse and phone records haven’t surfaced – despite the completion this month of a court-ordered search of more than 80,000 pages of FBI 9/11 records. Neither have specific FBI documents mentioned in the handful of FBI records that have trickled out to date, or others that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, says he was shown by the FBI after the story broke in 2011.

What’s going on?

The answer appears to lie in an obscure provision of federal law enacted decades ago that allows the FBI to say that certain sensitive records don’t exist when they actually do exist.

“That sounds like the most likely thing because you know beyond any question that records were created and they’re not showing up where they should show up,” said Washington, D.C. attorney James Lesar, a veteran FOIA litigator. “They’ve simply kept them secret.”

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law in 1966. It provides access to federal agency records, but there are nine exemptions, including personal privacy, which agencies can invoke to withhold records from public inspection. There are also three less common “exclusions” used to suppress information about sensitive law enforcement and national security matters.

A 1986 amendment to the act incorporated an exclusion that allows the FBI to treat classified records about foreign intelligence or counterintelligence, or international terrorism as “not subject to the requirements” of the act.

Justice Department guidelines established by Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese say that means that those who request excluded records can be told, “there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request.”

NO LYING?
“The approach has never involved ‘lying,’ as some have suggested,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich told Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee in a Nov. 2011 letter. “The logic is simple: When a citizen makes a request pursuant to the FOIA, either implicit or explicit in the request is that it seeks records that are subject to the FOIA; where…records that exist are not subject to the FOIA, the statement “there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request” is wholly accurate.”

Still, such answers can “mislead,” as California U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney observed in a 2011 ruling in another FOIA case.

When the law is invoked “the government will routinely submit an in camera declaration addressing that claim, one way or the other,” the guidelines say. “In camera” is legal terminology for privately in the judge’s chambers.

That appears to be what happened in federal court in Fort Lauderdale this month when the FBI filed Records Section Chief David Hardy’s fourth declaration in BrowardBulldog.org’s FOIA case. A footnote in the declaration says the FBI simultaneously filed Hardy’s fifth declaration in camera and ex parte (without providing a copy to the news organization).

Miami attorney Thomas Julin represents BrowardBulldog.org.

“We intend to challenge the FBI’s claim that it has no records or that they can be treated as not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,” said Julin. “The judge can make a determination that these records should be open to the American public and I would expect him to do that if he finds that disclosure of these records would not endanger national security.

“We have every reason to believe that this is the case since Sen. Graham has been espousing the view that the existence of a Saudi network in the United States is something that should be disclosed to the American people and would not endanger the United States,” Julin said. Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fl., chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch continues his review of Hardy’s latest declarations and more than 80,000 pages of un-redacted 9/11 documents the FBI has produced for his private inspection.

QUESTIONS ABOUT AN FBI AGENT’S TRANSFER
FBI records released to date and the observations of the counterterrorism officer appear to fit the FOIA exemption scenario.

The FBI agent in charge of the Sarasota Saudi investigation was Gregory Sheffield. According to the counterterrorism officer, Sheffield wrote two released 2002 reports, including one citing connections between al-Hijji and others tied to the attacks.

On July 22, 2002, Sheffield interviewed al-Hijji’s wife, Anoud, and mother-in-law Deborah Ghazzawi “regarding possible terrorist activity.” The women, who had returned briefly to the home, denied fleeing before 9/11 or knowing certain unnamed individuals, according to the reports.

Soon after, according to the counterterrorism officer, Sheffield was transferred to the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence (FCI) division and left the area. The officer said the transfer suggested Sheffield may have recruited an al-Hijji family member as a source of information.

“I believe that the transfer of Sheffield to the FCI side of the Bureau speaks volumes as to the lack of information available. If he was able to recruit a family member then all information up to that point will be off limits under the National Security Act,” the counterintelligence officer said in an interview last year.

New FBI records: A chilling find in a dumpster; 9/11 “person of interest” re-enters U.S.

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/0...re-enters-u-s/

July 1, 2014 at 5:01 am

Freshly released, but heavily-censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars, about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The documents were released to BrowardBulldog.org Monday amid ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation. The news organization sued in 2012 after being denied access to the Bureau’s file on a once secret investigation focusing on Abdulaziz al-Hijji, his wife, Anoud and her father Esam Ghazzawi, an advisor to a Saudi prince.

An FBI letter accompanying the documents, the fourth batch to be released since the suit was filed, cites national security and other reasons to justify why certain information was withheld. The letter does not explain why the documents were not previously acknowledged to exist.

One FBI report, dated April 3, 2002 recounts a chilling discovery made by the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office on Halloween 2001.

Deputies were called after a man with a Tunisian passport was observed disposing of items in a dumpster behind a storage facility he’d rented in Bradenton.

The man’s name is blanked out, but the report says authorities who searched the dumpster found “a self-printed manual on terrorism and Jihad, a map of the inside of an unnamed airport, a rudimentary last will and testament, a weight to fuel ratio calculation for a Cessna 172 aircraft, flight training information from the Flight Training Center in Venice and printed maps of Publix shopping centers in Tampa Bay.”

The Flight Training Center is where 9/11 hijack pilot Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Flight 93 when it crashed in Shanksville, Pa, took flying lessons.

The three paragraphs that follow are completely blanked out. The reasons cited include information “specifically authorized under criteria established by (presidential) executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

The documents were located via court-ordered text searches using the names of the al-Hijjis and Ghazzawi. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch is currently reviewing more than 80,000 pages of 9/11 records.

Miami First Amendment attorney Thomas Julin represents BrowardBulldog.org.

“This release suggests that the FBI has covered up information that is vitally important to public safety,” said Julin. “It’s startling that after initially denying they had any documents they continue to find new documents as the weeks and months roll by. Each new batch suggests there are many, many more documents.”

“There needs to be a full scale explanation of what’s going on here,” said Julin.

The report of the Bradenton incident includes information about the al-Hijjis. The excisions, however, keep secret how what happened there ties back to the al-Hijjis.

The same is true about another FBI document dated Feb. 2, 2012.

On that day, FBI offices in Tampa and Charlotte received information from Washington stamped “secret” stating that a “person of interest” in the FBI’s massive 9/11 investigation had returned to the United States.

The person, whose name is redacted, was reported to be “traveling to Texas and LA for business/tourism.” The person apparently told authorities upon entering the country that he could be reached in Charlotte. He provided a phone number “associated with furniture manufacturers in North Carolina,” the report says.

Details about that were blanked out. But the report also says, “Tampa is notified that a person of interest to Tampa regarding the PENTTBOMB investigation has a valid visa for re-entry into the U.S.” PENTTBOMB is the FBI’s code name for its 9/11 investigation.

In all, the FBI released 11 pages Monday. They contain statements reiterating that the al-Hijjis had departed the U.S. in haste shortly before 9/11 and that “further investigation” had “revealed many connections” between them and persons associated with “attacks on 9/11/2001.”

Those statements flatly contradict the FBI’s public statements that agents found no connection between the al-Hijjis and the 9/11 plot.

Yet they dovetail with the account of a counterintelligence source who has said investigators in 2001 found evidence – phone records and photographs of license plates snapped at the entrance to the al-Hijji’s Sarasota area neighborhood – that showed Mohamed Atta, other hijackers and former Broward resident and current al Qaeda fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al-Hijji’s home.

None of that information, or even the fact that an investigation in Sarasota took place was disclosed by the FBI to Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the attacks or the 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham. Graham co-chaired the joint inquiry.

The documents, while stamped secret, are marked as having been formally classified earlier this month in accordance with the National Security Information Security Classification. The parts of the documents that were not released are to be kept secret until 2039.

Among other things, the government asserted that classification is necessary because the censored information pertains to foreign relations or foreign activities, including confidential sources.

“This could be about information considered embarrassing to Saudi Arabia,” said Julin. Fifteen of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The April 2002 FBI report contains additional new information, though the deletions make its full meaning difficult to discern.

It says the Tampa FBI office “has determined that (blank) is an antagonist of the United States of America. (Blank) resides in Jerusalem. (Blank) allegedly has held regularly and recurring meetings at his residence to denounce and criticize the United States of America and its policies. (Blank) is allegedly an international businessman with great wealth.”

In November 2001, (blank) visited the United States for the first time. He traveled to Sarasota, Florida, opened a bank account and made initial queries into the purchase of property in south central Florida. (Blank) intends to establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida. (Blank) revealed that (blank) is fearful of (blank) and fears that (blank) intends to begin offensive operations against the United States if he is able to purchase property and establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida.”

Three follow-up lines are blanked out.