Editorial: Release the full report on Sept. 11

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 | 8:36 a.m.

A full disclosure of the findings so far is what was needed from the federal government's report on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Instead we have a report with 28 pages inked out. We are told by the White House that those pages contain sensitive information that could compromise the ongoing investigation by revealing sources and investigative methods. President Bush has stated, also, that the pages could tip off people who are still under investigation. The inevitable leaks, however, rendered those explanations hollow. The New York Times interviewed people with inside knowledge of the classified pages and reported their general content. The pages, according the newspaper's sources, reveal that senior officials within the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia helped finance the terrorists.

In commissioning the report the White House said the American people deserve a full accounting of the national tragedy. It should have held to that view. If there are findings concerning Saudi Arabian officials they should be open to review by everyone. What we have now are leaked reports that have cast suspicion on the entire ruling family of Saudi Arabia, which is demanding that the pages be released so it can respond. The government's responsibility was to provide the results of its investigation, no matter how painful or embarrassing, so that we could distance ourselves from this kind of suspicion and rumor and begin fixing what actually went wrong. The facts of our own failings have already helped us reorganize the federal government. The facts of another nation's failings, if allowed to surface, could lead to more realistic foreign policy and tighter financial controls.

Saudi Arabian officials, according to the leaked information from government insiders, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to charities and organizations. Some of this money found its way into the hands of the 19 terrorists -- 15 from Saudi Arabia -- who hijacked four planes and killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, according to reports based on leaked accounts of the blacked-out pages. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican senator on the Sept. 11 inquiry panel, has said 95 percent of the 28 pages was classified for the wrong reason. "I think it might be embarrassing to some international relations," he said.

President Bush should end the speculation and leaks and all the attendant cynicism and order that the pages be declassified. The report was supposed to help heal the country, not promote divisions.