Wednesday morning, Glenn played audio of Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) calling for the government to declassify twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 report that have been hidden away from the American people. He claimed those pages do not present a threat to national security, and that they would fundamentally change people's understanding of what happened that day. Wednesday night, Rep. Massie joined The Glenn Beck Program to discuss in more detail why those pages should be released and how the American people will react.
"Tonight, we’re going to shine the light on something that has been kept in the dark for nearly 13 years going back to the Bush administration and even before," Glenn said. "It’s going to lead to some ugly truths, but no matter how embarrassing it might be for the Bush administration, for the Clintons, or whoever else is involved, if it’s embarrassing for our allies, a nation that claims to stand for truth and justice must adhere to that principle every time, not when it’s easy, not when it’s in our best interest or our political interest, but when it is a value every time."
"Citizens, especially the families of the 9/11 victims, deserve to know the truth. Now, some congressmen were recently given access to 28 classified pages from a 9/11 intelligence report. TheBlaze has shown this before, but we’ve just shown you the blacked-out pages. Now, after reading it, the whole page, one congressman who we’re about to talk to here, said he couldn’t go more than a few sentences each paragraph without having to pause and 'rearrange his understanding of history.' That’s remarkable."
"Here’s the story, back in 2002, a congressional report was released called Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. We have gone through this, we have talked about it. People back in 2002 or 2003 were asking for more of it. It’s why we have these conspiracy theories in the first place.
"But 28 pages of the report, about 7,200 words, were redacted and deemed classified by President George W. Bush. Now, his reasoning was a vague reference to it being national security risk. Normally, and the reason why this didn’t work, is normally only sensitive names and contracts and covert agents, etc., are redacted, but this had 28 pages that were entirely blacked out."
"And at the time, 46 senators, that’s half of the Senate, led by Chuck Schumer, wrote a letter to the president asking to declassify the pages. Schumer claimed that the redacted information was related to, and I want to quote, 'specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11th hijackers while they were in the United States' – probably screams Saudi Arabia, and that’s what it did. He went directly to claiming Saudi Arabia was the primary source of this foreign funding."
Glenn explained that other people have come out and drawn connections between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi Arabia, including former Senator Bob Graham.
While Congressman Massie can't reveal exactly what he read in those redacted pages, he can speak out about why it's important they be released. He talked to Glenn about those issues Wednesday night:
A transcript of the interview is below:
Glenn: Congressman Massie joins me now from Washington, D.C. Congressman, how are you?
Congressman Massie: Doing well, Glenn. Thanks for having me on.
Glenn: I’m concerned because I know you can’t say anything because anything that you say can and will be held against you, so, you know, you’re going to have to talk as cryptically here, but I was gravely disturbed by your description where you said you had to stop and refigure history every couple of sentences. Can you give us any other description other than that?
Congressman Massie: Well, absolutely. You know, when 9/11 happened and shortly thereafter, we were all like sponges, we’re trying to absorb as much information to understand the who, the what, the why, the where, but at some point you quit collecting information because there’s no more information to be had or you think there’s no more information. And it all sort of sets up like concrete in your brain.
Well, as I was reading these 28 pages, I had to try and take apart that concrete that had set up, my own understanding of what had led up to 9/11 and what had enabled it. And then also what really hurt me was to wonder why did my government keep this from me for 13 years? What were their motives?
You know, there will be anger, frustration, and embarrassment when these 28 pages finally come out. Those are all emotions that you describe that I had while I was reading these pages. These are emotions that I think the public will have when they find out.
Glenn: Here’s what worries me, and I want to make sure that we’re not talking about this. We went to war, we’ve killed a lot of people, and we used our own righteous indignation or righteous anger to stop this. Have we done something morally reprehensible here? Is it going to change our understanding of war?
Congressman Massie: Well, you’re right. We fought two wars ostensibly to keep another 9/11 from happening, and I’m not ready to relitigate those wars and the causes for going to war. But here’s why I’m coming out right now and making this one of my priorities to get this out there is we’re talking about getting involved in two other wars, the war in Syria and a war in Iraq. And I don’t want to relitigate the other wars, but look, before we jump into these wars, we need to understand what really caused 9/11.
And if we’re going to use 9/11 as a motivation to get involved in these civil wars in the Middle East, then I think the American public and surely to goodness all of the congressmen up here who are going to be voting on these wars need to read these pages and understand what truly caused 9/11 and who our friends are and who our enemies are.
Glenn: Okay, I mean, I know you’re not going to tell me, but this sounds like we’re talking about Saudi Arabia, but I want, and that just could be my bias from the things that we know from the intelligence community that have been told to us, we know there is a bias on that. I don’t think anybody would be surprised, and let’s use both Clinton and Bush, I mean Sandy Berger went in to smuggle papers out of the National Archives in his underpants. You don’t do that and then get pardoned by the guy from the other side if they’re not trying to kick dirt over the trail.
And I don’t think personally that it was anybody in our administration was doing anything nefarious or, you know, anything like that. It just looked bad. It was just embarrassing because they might’ve been, you know, taking too many walks with too many princes or whatever. Is this stuff that will deeply tear us apart, or will this be just, has our government been worse than just sloppy and greedy at times? I’m trying to figure out a way to ask you these questions.
Congressman Massie: No, this will not tear our country apart. It will be embarrassing. It will not endanger us to release this information, but the American public needs to have it. I would tell you to look to maybe Bob Graham, Senator Bob Graham, who was privy to even more information than I have in those 28 pages since he was on the intelligence committee. You know, he’s leading this charge.
I will say, you know, there are things I can’t even tell my wife that I learned about in these soundproof SCIFs, and those 28 pages are included in that category. Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina, he’s the one who sponsored this resolution. It’s called House Resolution 428, and you know, they thanked him for sponsoring that by the establishment primaried him and spent ten times as much money as him back in his district this spring, and he still won because he represents the people and truth and transparency.
But those are the kind of risks that, you know, we bring upon ourselves by speaking out. But now is the time, and I’ll tell you, you mentioned the families. You played a clip from the families of the victims. This needs to come out because there are things being litigated in court right now that pertain to these 28 pages, and the families of the victims deserve this information and this evidence because there is culpability here, and there is liability. And you know, if our judicial system is going to work its way, the evidence and the truth needs to be there.
Glenn Congressman, thank you very much, and you keep up the fight. Let us know, I’ve directed TheBlaze to cover any and all, so you can count on us. Just let us know how we can help. Appreciate it.
Congressman Massie: Thank you, Glenn. People need to contact the White House. They need to contact their congressmen and their senators.
Glenn: Thank you. God bless. Listen, TheBlaze is going to stay on this as much as we can until the information just dries up, but this is not a partisan thing. This is a bipartisan thing. This is about the truth. This is about who are we really, and as the congressman said, before we go any further, we have to know who the bad guys are, we have to know what we’ve done.
Let the chips fall where they may. I mean, if George Bush was involved in doing some things, and he was buddies with somebody and whatever, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. That’s in the past. Let’s chart the course on the future, and the only way we can do that is if we build it on a foundation of truth.