‘Will the 28 Pages Turn Into 80,000 in Saudi 9/11 Connection?’

PRESS RELEASE

‘Will the 28 Pages Turn Into 80,000 in Saudi 9/11 Connection?’

May 13, 2016 (EIRNS)—That is one headline of dozens of reports—for the first time making the national media—of the five-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle by Florida investigative reporter Dan Christensen of the FloridaBulldog.com to get access to more than 80,000 pages of FBI files from the Tampa, Florida office about Saudi citizens, including an advisor to a member of the Royal Family, living in Sarasota, Florida who had connections to the 911 hijackers.

On May 12, the Daily Beast published its story by Shane Harris with Eleanor Clift—on the Sarasota, Florida case where Federal District Court Judge William Zloch is reviewing more than 80,000 pages of FBI files classified under the title PENTTBOM— in the FOIA case brought by Christensen.

The Daily Beast details how the FBI lied to the reporters, and to the court in the FOIA case, and that only when former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, co-chairman of the 2002 Joint Congressional investigation into 911 was willing to testify that he had seen FBI documents about the Sarasota family and 911, did the FBI admit to having "something," i.e., "35 pages." But Judge Zloch didn’t buy the FBI’s story of only 35 pages and ordered the government to do a comprehensive search. The Justice Dept. came up with 80,000 pages under the codename PENTTBOM (Pentagon/Twin Towers/Bombing) from the Tampa office.

Christensen’s original Sarasota investigation appeared on the front page of the Miami Herald in 2011, when he had teamed up with two Irish reporters, renowned Irish historian Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. His battle with the FBI and DoJ is described in the Daily Beast:

Gatekeeper logs of the Al Hiijjii/Ghazzawi family’s visitors to their Sarasota home showed visits by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah;
Sen. Bob Graham saw some of the FBI files on the Sarasota family after he read the press stories on the Sarasota connection and was furious that the FBI had never given the Joint Congressional Committee a WORD about the Tampa investigation.
In order to review the files, Zloch has to retrieve them from a secure location and is only allowed to remove a small selection at a time. The Daily Mail of London has a long piece citing the Daily Beast article, but it also reports a connection to the Saudi Royal Family: "the owner of the home was Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd." Ghazzawi’s daughter, Anoud, lived there with her husband, Abdulazzi al Hiijjii. Both suddenly fled to Saudi Arabia on 8/30/2001.

Daily Beast reporter Eleanor Clift is reportly writing a followup article on the 28 pages and more than a dozen other websites carried the Daily Beast story today, including trunews, commondreams, conservative voice.