US President Donald Trump’s administration has rejected to release documents related to the 9/11 terror attacks. Trump administration made decision to block families of victims from obtaining evidence in their civil lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. The US Attorney General William Barr and intelligence director Richard Grenell made extraordinary claims in New York federal court filings during the recent week that the documents remain state secrets. It must be locked down to protect the national security interests of the US government, in spite of the president’s pledge to help families in the case. The filing supposed that exposing Saudi ties to the attacks could pose exceptionally grave damage to national security.
Point to be noted that Grennell was appointed by President Trump in February. He wrote the documents contain highly sensitive and classified national security information concerning foreign government information, intelligence activities, sources and methods, information concerning foreign relations, and foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources. He said it must be protected because its disclosure reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the US. The US Attorney General Barr informed the court the public discussion of and justification for the documents’ secrecy must also be kept secret.
Grennell said that Plaintiffs had entered the lawsuit in 2017 to find out the relationships between 19 hijackers (15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia) and Saudi officials with ties to al Qaeda. Though connections among some of those men have been publicly known for years through the release of some documents shared in a 9/11 Commission report in 2004. The families of victims have sought additional documents that White House officials have long sought to keep secret. It is noteworthy that the president had reportedly pledged to grant families access to documents in the case. The officials of US Department of Justice agreed to release the name of one Saudi official linked to the case via FBI documents.