Congress overrides Obama
veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By Tom Carter
On Wednesday,
the US Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation that would
permit victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families to sue
Saudi Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the involvement
of Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and planning of the
attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and Obama
administrations.
The vote,
97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of Representatives, represents the
first and only congressional override of Obama’s presidency. Under the US
Constitution, the president’s veto can be overturned only by a two-thirds
majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama
administration and the military and intelligence agencies, backed by sections
of the media, including the New York Times, have vigorously denounced the
legislation. Obama personally, together with Central Intelligence Agency
director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all publicly opposed
the bill.
In a letter
to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama warned that the bill would
“threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect the United States,
including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials, overseas.”
In a lead
editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times similarly warned that “if the bill
becomes law, other countries could adopt similar legislation defining their own
exemptions to sovereign immunity. Because no country is more engaged in the
world than the United States—with military bases, drone operations,
intelligence missions and training programs—the Obama administration fears that
Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad.”
In other
words, the bill would set a precedent for families of victims of American
aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of victims of “targeted
killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits against US war criminal
in their own countries’ courts.
Obama
denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday. “It's an example of why
sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish Congress here had
done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived as voting against 9/11
families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for
people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do ... And it was,
you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a
tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, “When first we practice
to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies surrounding the September 11 attacks
continue to unravel, one senses that the American ruling class and its
representatives do not see a clear way out of the dilemma.
Openly
torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Indeed, the
Obama administration, the military and intelligence agencies, and theNew York
Times are publicly working to cover up a crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its
backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an ally of the United States. The
mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill constitutes an admission that the US
government is hiding something with respect to the September 11 attacks.
The
alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling class, is also fraught
with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families of September 11 victims
will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi monarchy, an ally of both
Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11 attacks. This, in turn,
will highlight long and sordid history of American support for Islamic
fundamentalism in the
Middle East,
which continues to the present day in Syria and Libya.
Perhaps most
dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi
intelligence agents in the September 11 attacks will once again raise
questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US
intelligence
agencies
ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the attacks, based on Saudi
Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the
US government deliberately cover up the Saudi connection after the fact,
instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state sponsor of terrorism” and that
Iraq was developing “weapons of mass destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New York
Times, for its part, simply lied about the evidence of Saudi complicity. “The
legislation is motivated by a belief among the 9/11 families that Saudi Arabia
played a role in the attacks, because 15 of the 19 hijackers, who were members
of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors wrote. “But the independent American
commission that investigated the attacks found no evidence that the Saudi
government or senior Saudi officials financed the terrorists.”
In fact, at
least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar al-Bayoumi, who was
identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Saudi intelligence agent
with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the hijackers were paid for work in
fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with the Saudi Defense Ministry, with
which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The night before the attacks, three of
the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi
government official.
These and
other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page suppressed chapter of the
2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities
Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. After 14 years of
stalling, the document was finally released to the public this summer.
Yet the New York Times continues to describe
the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and
sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups
throughout the world, as “a partner in
combating terrorism.”
The Justice
Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed Wednesday, is a direct reaction to
these revelations of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks, under
pressure from organizations of survivors and families of victims. The law
amends the federal judicial code to allow US courts “to hear cases involving
claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur
inside the United States as a result of. .. an act of terrorism, committed
anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although the
bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened
massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of
the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings.
This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
During
Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the floor of the Senate were
nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of the bill, Republican
Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns about the sovereign
immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries as a result of
this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had unintended
consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious
comments of legislators and the crisscrossing denunciations within the ruling
elite reflect the significance of this controversy for the entire American
political establishment. For 15 years, the American population has been
relentlessly told that the events of September 11, 2001 “changed everything,”
warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the militarization of the
police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian levels of spying,
death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions of dollars of
expenditures.
The
collapse of the official version of that day’s events shows that American
politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
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