President Joe Biden issued an executive order Friday directing Attorney General Merrick Garland and other agency heads to release declassified documents surrounding the FBI’s investigation into the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The president’s order instructs Garland to oversee the release and complete it within the next six months, making good on one of his campaign promises.
“When I ran for president, I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America,” Biden said in a statement ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
“We must never forget the enduring pain of the families and loved ones of the 2,977 innocent people who were killed during the worst terrorist attack on America in our history,” he continued.
Dubbed by some as the original, modern conspiracy theory, advocates have urged the federal government to be more transparent and release information about the deadly attacks and their investigations. However, former Trump attorney general William Barr told a federal court that the information should remain classified in 2019.
Families of victims praised Biden’s move. Hundreds of protesters had rallied against the president’s appearance at a Ground Zero memorial event this year unless he took action as promised.
“We are thrilled to see the president forcing the release of more evidence about Saudi connections to the 9/11 attacks,” Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom at the World Trade Center, exclaimed in a statement released Friday. “We have been fighting the FBI and intelligence community for too long, but this looks like a true turning point.”
Some believe the documents could connect the Saudi government to plane hijackers, though the 9/11 Commission report published in 2004 found “no evidence” Saudi Arabia had ever funded Al Qaeda. Fifteen of the aircraft hijackers were Saudi, as was Osama bin Laden.
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