Supports· moderateSEP-E030
Finding 20 of the withheld section, with the inquiry's own caveat
- what the source states
- "20. Finding: While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government." The same section states: "it should be clear that this Joint Inquiry has made no final determinations as to the reliability or sufficiency of the information regarding these issues that we found contained in FBI and CIA documents. It was not the task of this Joint Inquiry to conduct the kind of extensive investigation that would be required to determine the true significance of any such alleged connections to the Saudi Government."
- what we infer
- The two sentences must travel together, and in public argument they almost never do. The finding reports contact and assistance from individuals who "may be" connected; the caveat states the inquiry did not assess whether the underlying information was reliable. Quoting either alone misrepresents the document.
- limitations
- Redacted at publication to protect sources and methods, so the released text is incomplete by construction.
- Reports raw investigative leads from agency files rather than adjudicated findings.
- The document is an image-only scan; these quotes were read by optical character recognition and warrant a human re-read before promotion.