Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Hey State Dept. What’s the Hurry?

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Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
May 19, 2016

Terrorist Designations of ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya

U.S. State Department: The Department of State has announced the designation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL’s) branch in Libya (ISIL-Libya) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Today, the Department is also simultaneously designating ISIL-Libya, along with the ISIL branches in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which imposes sanctions and penalties on foreign persons that have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

The consequences of the FTO and E.O. 13224 designations include a prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, these organizations, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of these organizations that is in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons. The Department of State took these actions in consultation with the Departments of Justice and the Treasury.

ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya all emerged as official ISIL branches in November 2014 when U.S. Department of State-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist and ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that he had accepted the oaths of allegiance from fighters in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and was thereby creating ISIL “branches” in those countries.

While ISIL’s presence is limited to specific geographic locations in each country, all three ISIL branches have carried out numerous deadly attacks since their formation. Among ISIL-Yemen’s attacks, the group claimed responsibility for a pair of March 2015 suicide bombings targeting two separate mosques in Sana’a, Yemen, that killed more than 120 and wounded over 300. Separately, ISIL-Saudi Arabia has carried out numerous attacks targeting Shia mosques in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, leaving over 50 people dead. Finally, ISIL-Libya’s attacks have included the kidnapping and execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, as well as numerous attacks targeting both government and civilian targets that have killed scores of people.

After today’s action, the U.S. Department of State has now sanctioned eight ISIL branches, having previously designated ISIL-Khorasan, ISIL-Sinai, Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria, Boko Haram, and ISIL-North Caucasus. Terrorism designations are one of the ways the United States can expose and isolate organizations and individuals engaged in terrorism, impose serious sanctions on them, and enable coordinated action across the U.S. Government and with our international partners to disrupt the activities of terrorists. This includes denying them access to the U.S. financial system and enabling U.S. law enforcement actions.

SCOTUS: Illegals can be Deported for Minor Crimes

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High court rules non-U.S. citizens can be deported if convicted of minor crimes

WASHINGTON (AP) –  The Supreme Court is making it easier for the government to deport or otherwise remove people who are not U.S. citizens if they are convicted of seemingly minor state crimes.

The justices ruled 5-3 Thursday that a man who spent 23 years living in New York as a lawful permanent resident can be barred from re-entering the country because of a 1999 conviction for attempted arson.

George Luna Torres had served one day in prison and five years of probation after pleading guilty in state court but otherwise had a clean record since his parents brought him into the country from the Dominican Republic in 1983.

But the government argued that the state law conviction was equivalent to an aggravated felony for purposes of immigration law.

Under immigration law, a lawful permanent resident can be deported or denied re-entry to the United States after being convicted of an aggravated felony. Those offenses include certain federal crimes as well as state offenses that share the same elements.

Luna argued that the federal crime of arson is different from the state version because it must involve interstate commerce.

Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said that is simply a technical difference needed to give Congress authority over arson crimes and not a meaningful distinction. She said Luna’s argument would also exclude more serious state crimes, such as kidnapping, from affecting immigration status simply because a kidnapper failed to cross state lines.

“The national, local or foreign character of a crime has no bearing on whether it is grave enough to warrant an alien’s automatic removal,” Kagan said.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority was ignoring a strict textual reading of the federal law, which includes interstate commerce as part of the crime.

“An element is an element, and I would not so lightly strip a federal statute of one,” Sotomayor said.

She was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. *****

Mexican Airline Offering Migrants Free Airfare to Texas Border

Two foreign airline companies have begun offering steep discounts to Cuban migrants–set for border crossing into western Texas–as thousands rush to the United States in the aftermath of thawing relations with the communist island. Children under age 11 fly free of charge.

The Panamanian government confirmed to the Associated Press Wednesday that Panama City-based Copa Airlines and Mexico’s Global Air are now offering roughly 30 percent discounts for adult Cuban migrants hoping to cross into the United States with children enjoying complimentary seats. Since May 9, the airlines have reported that almost 2,500 have been shuttled to Ciudad Juarez for easy crossing into El Paso thereafter. An estimated 1,300 await flights booked in the weeks ahead under the promotion. More here from Breitbart.

****

Immigrants must pass stringent eligibility requirements in order to naturalize.  Naturalization is not an easy process.  In order to become a U.S. citizen, an immigrant must:

  • First reside in the United States continuously for five years as a Legal Permanent Resident (three years in the case of the spouse of a U.S. citizen).
  • Be of “good moral character,” as determined by a criminal background check with the FBI.
  • Be proficient in spoken and written English.
  • Demonstrate a basic understanding of U.S. government and history.
  • Take an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, its Constitution and laws, and renounce allegiance to any other nation.

Latino immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship in record numbers thanks to Trump

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign may actually be empowering the Latino vote.

No, really. At least that’s what a number of non-profit organizations and even the White House are working toward.

The Republican candidate’s harsh words toward immigrants and repeated campaign promises to deport millions of undocumented people and build an impermeable wall along the U.S.-Mexico border immediately propelled him to the front of the GOP pack, but it’s also driving a larger number of immigrants than usual to seek U.S. citizenship – and have a voice in whether or not Trump wins the White House this November.

Hortensia Villegas is a Colorado mother of two who immigrated from Mexico legally nearly 10 years ago. She never felt the need to become a citizen, she told the New York Times, until Trump rose in the polls.

“I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” Villegas, 32, told the paper at a Denver union hall where volunteers were helping hundreds of immigrants to fill out citizenship applications. “He doesn’t like us.”

And Villegas is not alone. Her sister and parents, as well as the parents of her husband – Miguel Garfío, who is a U.S. citizen by virtue of having been born in Colorado –are part of the crush of Latino immigrants who are trying to naturalize in time to vote this year.

Applications for citizenship were up in the six months through the end of January by 14 percent over the same time frame the previous year, the Times reported. Activists say that the numbers are growing by the week, estimating that the total applications for fiscal year 2016, which lasts until the end of September, could wind up close to a million.

That’s a 20 percent increase over previous years.

Traditionally, Mexican immigrants have sought citizenship at lower rates than others – according to Pew Research Center data, 36 percent of eligible Mexicans in recent years have become citizens, compared to 68 percent of immigrants overall.

That may be changing, thanks to Trump.

FoxLatino: Maria Polanco, a Honduran migrant who has lived in Nevada for 26 years but is only now applying for citizenship, told the Guardian recently, “We [immigrants] are not perfect, but the majority of us are not what Donald Trump says. We came looking for better opportunities for us and our kids. My great pride is that my daughter graduated from college – I don’t think she could’ve done that in my country.”

“People who are eligible are really feeling the urgency to get out there,” Tara Raghuveer, the deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, told the Times. “They are worried by the prospect that someone who is running for president has said hateful things.”

“This is a big deal,” Jocelyn Sida of Mi Familia Vota, told the Guardian. “We as Latinos are always being told that we’re taking jobs or we’re anchor babies, and all these things are very hurtful. It’s getting to the point where folks are frustrated with that type of rhetoric. They realize the only way they can stop this is by getting involved civically.”

Labor unions and NGOs like the National Partnership are the main actors providing assistance to those of the 8.8 million non-citizen immigrants who may want to naturalize, but they are not alone.

The White House launched a national campaign in September to help people apply for citizenship, setting up “citizen corners” at public libraries and recruiting prominent immigrants like 1980s pitching star Fernando Valenzuela and Spanish chef José Andrés for ads.

Last week, $10 million dollars in federal grants were promised to NGOs helping immigrants through the application process.

Many conservatives see it as a blatant effort to expand Democratic support in battleground states with large numbers of immigrants like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

“I certainly don’t care what party they register with; I just want them to become citizens,” said Leon Rodriguez, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), told the times.

The candidate himself has long suggested that he’ll win the Latino vote, and his campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, told the Times, “No one will benefit more from Mr. Trump’s pro-worker immigration reforms than the millions of immigrants who already call America home.”

Mary Victorio, 22, a Mexican-born student at the University of Colorado Denver, told the newspaper that while she didn’t support him politically, she was grateful to Trump. “He gave us that extra push we needed to get ready to vote, to prove to people who see us negatively they are wrong.”

The Ferguson Effect is Real

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FBI Director James Comey described what is happening across the country to law enforcement and he called it the Ferguson Effect. Police have backed off due to threats, retribution by the left and organizations and to for sure save their own lives. The criminals have weapons and they have a deadly objective.

 

Washington, D.C. May 16, 2016
  • FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691
FBI Releases 2015 Preliminary Statistics for Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty

Preliminary statistics released today by the FBI show that 41 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2015. This is a decrease of almost 20 percent when compared with the 51 officers killed in 2014. By region, 19 officers died as a result of criminal acts that occurred in the South, nine officers in the West, five officers in the Midwest, four in the Northeast, and four in Puerto Rico.

By circumstance, eight officers were investigating suspicious persons/circumstances; seven were engaged in tactical situations; six officers were conducting traffic pursuits/stops; four were killed as a result of ambushes (entrapment/premeditation); three officers were killed as a result of unprovoked attacks; three died from injuries inflicted while answering disturbance calls (all three being domestic disturbance calls); three officers were killed while answering robbery in progress calls or pursuing robbery suspects; two were handling, transporting, or maintaining custody of prisoners; two officers were handling persons with mental illness; one sustained fatal injuries while performing an investigative activity; one was answering a burglary in progress call or pursuing a burglary suspect; and one officer was killed while attempting other arrest.

Offenders used firearms in 38 of the 41 felonious deaths. These included 29 incidents with handguns, seven incidents with rifles, one incident with a shotgun, and one incident in which the firearm type was not reported. Three victim officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons.

Thirty of the 41 killed officers were confirmed to be wearing body armor at the times of the incidents. Six of the 41 slain officers fired their own weapons, and six officers attempted to fire their service weapons. Three victim officers had their weapons stolen; three officers were killed with their own weapons.

Forty-one victim officers died from injuries sustained in 38 separate incidents. Thirty-six of those incidents have been cleared by arrest or exceptional means.

An additional 45 officers were killed in 2015 in line-of-duty accidents, which include officer deaths that are found not to be willful and intentional. This total is the same number of officers who were accidentally killed in 2014. By region, 29 officers died due to accidents in the South, six in the Midwest, five in the Northeast, and five in the West.

Twenty-nine of the officers died as a result of automobile accidents, seven were struck by vehicles, and four were fatally injured due to motorcycle accidents. Two of the 45 officers were killed from accidental shootings, one from an aircraft accident, one due to a fall, and one from an all-terrain vehicle accident.

Of the 29 officers who died due to automobile accidents, 18 officers were wearing seatbelts. Eight officers were not wearing seatbelts (four of whom were ejected from the vehicles), and seatbelt use was not reported for three of the officers who were killed due to automobile accidents.

Final statistics and complete details will be available in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s publication, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2015, which will be published on the FBI’s Internet site in the fall.

 

The Potty President: Obama’s Legacy Policy

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So, no other crisis, issue, topic or war is on his plate….the focus for the Obama regime is the potty. Sheesh…this is extortion and defining yet a third gender…being genderless.

Remember, this is a president that alleges he is concerned about personal internet activity privacy…physical privacy? Not so much.

Jared Fox, the city Department of Education’s LGBT Community Liaison, also released a statement backing the directive, adding, “We have guidelines in place to ensure every school building provides a safe and supportive learning environment that allows students to use the bathroom of their gender identity.”

Safe? Really? Define safe and then define who determines the gender identity. What ever happened to the 10th Amendment anyway?

 What about the locker rooms?

Even the top government lawyer, Loretta Lynch is fretting over a rebirth of Jim Crowe using genderless bathrooms as the 2016 example.

NYT’s WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to issue a sweeping directive telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

A letter to school districts will go out Friday, adding to a highly charged debate over transgender rights in the middle of the administration’s legal fight with North Carolina over the issue. The declaration — signed by Justice and Education department officials — will describe what schools should do to ensure that none of their students are discriminated against.

It does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat: Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.

The move is certain to draw fresh criticism, particularly from Republicans, that the federal government is wading into local matters and imposing its own values on communities across the country that may not agree. It represents the latest example of the Obama administration using a combination of policies, lawsuits and public statements to change the civil rights landscape for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people.

After supporting the rights of gay people to marry, allowing them to serve openly in the military and prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against them, the administration is wading into the battle over bathrooms and siding with transgender people.

“No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” John B. King Jr., the secretary of the Department of Education, said in a statement. “We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence.”

Courts have not settled the question of whether the nation’s sex discrimination laws apply in matters of gender identity. But administration officials, emboldened by a federal appeals court ruling in Virginia last month, think they have the upper hand. This week, the Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other over a state law that restricts access to bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. The letter to school districts had been in the works for months, Justice Department officials said.
“A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” according to the letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.
A school’s obligation under federal law “to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sex requires schools to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents, or community members raise objections or concerns,” the letter states. “As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”

As soon as a child’s parent or legal guardian asserts a gender identity for the student that “differs from previous representations or records,” the letter says, the child is to be treated accordingly — without any requirement for a medical diagnosis or birth certificate to be produced. It says that schools may — but are not required to — provide other restroom and locker room options to students who seek “additional privacy” for whatever reason.

Attached to the letter, the Obama administration will include a 25-page document describing “emerging practices” that are in place in many schools around the country. Those included installing privacy curtains or allowing students to change in bathroom stalls.

In a blog post accompanying the letter, senior officials at the Justice and Education Departments said they issued it in response to a growing chorus of inquiries from educators, parents and students across the country, including from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, to clarify their obligations and “best practices” for the treatment of transgender students.

“Schools want to do right by all of their students and have looked to us to provide clarity on steps they can take to ensure that every student is comfortable at their school, is in an environment free of discrimination, and has an opportunity to thrive,” wrote Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, and Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Thomas Aberli, a high school principal in Louisville, Ky., said the new guidance would help administrators across the country who are trying to determine the best way to establish safe and inclusive schools. He said his school had little to work with when it drafted a policy that was put in place last year. More here from the NYT’s.

80,000 More 9/11 Pages at Tampa FBI

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Like these journalists, I have been watching this for at least 4 years myself. Even more so, I used to live in Sarasota and came close to building a home in Prestancia.

I have one personal encounter with the Tampa FBI office several years ago, calling them to talk about a subject I was exploring on CAIR, the duty agent asked if I was an Islamophobe….what? He then hung up on me. Sheesh…Meanwhile, lets go beyond the 28 pages in question regarding the Saudis involved in the 9/11 plot and attack. There are more out there then were have been told and at least 80,000 are in the Tampa FBI field office. Hummmm…. to be sure however, there are thousands of foreign nationals who own and or rent houses in the United States. Some are here under a falsely applied diplomatic cover while others are here under that EB5 visa program or one of 38 others.

If memory serves me, 2 of the hijackers rented a home in Nokomis, just a few miles south of Sarasota and took flight lessons at the Venice, Florida airport, also within just a few miles. Both hijackers are well known, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.

 

Further, Esam Ghazzawi, a longtime adviser to Sultan’s father, Prince Fahd, owned the Sarasota home and there were some flights before 9/11 and after 9/11 that included the original city of Lexington, Kentucky that flew to Saudi Arabia. More here.

 photo courtesy of Bill Warner

The FBI Is Keeping 80,000 Secret Files on the Saudis and 9/11

DailyBeast: The secret ‘28 pages’ are just the start. The FBI has another 80,000 classified documents, many of which deal with Saudi connections to the 9/11 terror plot. What’s the Bureau got?

The Obama administration may soon release 28 classified pages from a congressional investigation that allegedly links Saudis in the United States to the 9/11 attackers. A former Republican member of the 9/11 Commission alleged Thursday that there was “clear evidence” of support for the hijackers from Saudi officials.

But in Florida, a federal judge is weighing whether to declassify portions of some 80,000 classified pages that could reveal far more about the hijackers’ Saudis connections and their activities in the weeks preceding the worst attack on U.S. soil.

The still-secret files speak to one of the strangest and most enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the Saudi occupants of a posh house in gated community in Sarasota, Florida, suddenly vanish in the two weeks prior to the attacks? And had they been in touch with the leader of the operation, Mohamed Atta, and two of his co-conspirators?

No way, the FBI says, even though the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers. On further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.

But a team of lawyers and investigative journalists has found what they say is hard evidence pointing in the other direction. Atta did visit the family before he led 18 men to their deaths and murdered 3,000 people, they say, and phone records connect the house to members of the 9/11 conspiracy.

The FBI did initially suspect something was off when their agents descended on the Sarasota house shortly after the attacks, tipped off by suspicious neighbors who had always found the family aloof.

Investigators found signs that the occupants had left in a hurry. Food was left on the counter and the refrigerator was stocked. Toys were still floating in the back-yard swimming pool. Dirty diapers were left in a bathroom. It also looked like the people who lived there weren’t coming back. The mail was piling up outside, and the door to an empty safe was wide open. Three cars remained parked in the garage and driveway.

The FBI later said it came up with reasonable answers to explain this odd behavior. But not until after the Tampa field office opened an investigation that claimed to find “numerous connections” between the family and the 9/11 hijackers.

The final answers about what really happened in Sarasota may lie somewhere in those 80,000 pages. To be sure, not all of them concern the FBI’s investigation of the Saudi family. The documents represent the entire case file of the 9/11 attacks at the Tampa field office. But some subset surely will reveal more about what the FBI knew, and when, and why it reached a different conclusion.

For the past two years, U.S. district court judge William Zloch has been going through the files, page-by-page, to determine what information that pertains to the Saudi case can be released.

But based on about three dozen pages that had been made public already under the Freedom of Information Act, and the work of the reporters, this is the picture that emerges of life at 4224 Escondito Circle, a three-bedroom house in an exclusive community called Prestancia, in the weeks before 9/11.

 photo courtesy Bill Warner

The house was occupied by a Saudi couple, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, and their three small children. Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, owned the home, along with his American-born wife, Deborah.

The family largely kept to themselves. A neighbor told the Tampa Bay Times that Abdulazzi said he was a student, and that his wife was religious. “He would come over for a cigarette and a drink and to get away from that praying every two hours,” the neighbor said.

But the family’s behavior, and undoubtedly their national origin, drew new suspicion after the 9/11 attacks. In April 2002, “based upon repeated citizen calls,” the FBI opened an investigation, which “revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks,” according to one of the few released documents.

Those jaw-dropping claims remained largely unknown for years. In part, that’s because the FBI now says that the initial reports came from an agent who couldn’t support his suspicions. Investigators later interviewed members of the family and found they had left the U.S. because Abdulazzi had just graduated and gotten a new job in Saudi Arabia.

The Sarasota family also had no connections to the 9/11 terrorists, the FBI concluded. (Their names are redacted in the reports, for privacy, but they have been publicly confirmed.)

Case closed? Hardly. In 2011, a pair of Irish journalists, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, who were publishing a book on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, contacted Dan Christensen, a veteran Florida reporter. They’d heard about the Sarasota family and had a confidential source—an unnamed counterterrorism official—who claimed to have detailed knowledge of the FBI’s investigation into the couple, including analysis of phone records that showed calls to and from the house connected to the hijackers. What’s more, the source also said that visitor logs from the security gate of the community showed that Atta, along with co-hijacker Ziad Jarrah, had come to the house, and that those logs had been turned over to the FBI.

The journalists teamed up and published an exposé on Christensen’s independent news site, FloridaBulldog.org, and on the front page of the Miami Herald. The story was an instant sensation, prompting the FBI to publicly declare that the case had been investigated and found to have no merit.

Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who had led the congressional inquiry that produced those 28 pages on Saudi connections, was stunned by the Sarasota allegations. The FBI hadn’t given Graham’s committee any information about the family or their suspected ties to Atta and other hijackers. Even the initial reports the FBI later said proved wrong weren’t disclosed to congressional investigators, Graham said. The journalists findings “open[ed] the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11,” Graham said at the time.

The FBI continued to publicly knock down the Sarasota connection. Graham eventually confronted the bureau and asked to see files from the Tampa field office. As he told The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift for a forthcoming article, Graham saw records that did show alleged contacts between the family and three hijackers, and further lines of inquiry that investigators could follow.

Later, Graham himself was confronted by the FBI’s then deputy director, Sean Joyce, who told him, “Basically everything about 9/11 was known and I was wasting my time and I should get a life,” Graham said.

For his part, Christensen took the government to court, suing under the Freedom of Information Act for the files and records to substantiate—or refute—his sources’ claims.

Thomas Julin, Christensen’s lawyer, told The Daily Beast that initially the FBI claimed it had no records. But when Julin told officials that Graham was willing to testify that he’d actually seen some, the Justice Department admitted to having found 35 pages of material, which it released.

It’s those pages, many of which bear heavy redactions, that show the FBI agents’ initial suspicions, the fact that an FBI case was open, and that investigators had found “many connections” between the family and the hijackers. There are also letters and memos from FBI officials dismissing the 9/11 connection as unfounded.

Those 35 pages were all the FBI could find about the alleged Sarasota conspiracy, officials insisted.

Zloch, the judge in the case, was not persuaded. He ordered the FBI to conduct a new search of its files, using a method that Christensen and his lawyer suggested. This time, they hit the mother lode.

“The FBI found some additional responsive documents which it produced,” Julin said. “But it also found 80,266 pages of material in the Tampa Field Office of the FBI which had been marked with the file number for the FBI’s PENTTBOM investigation.”

 

PENTTBOM, which stands for Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing, is the codename for the FBI’s investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

The judge ordered the FBI to hand over all 80,000-plus pages on May 1, 2014. He is still going through them to determine which may be released and has given no indication when he might finish.

Zloch’s task is made all the more painstaking by the strict security rules governing review of classified documents, even for a sitting judge. The files are kept in a secure facility, and he can only remove a portion at a time.

It’s still not clear how many of the files from the Tampa field office relate to the investigation of the Saudi family and the house on Escondito Circle. But Christensen believes those files will reveal the underlying reasons for the FBI’s early suspicions. And he’s prepared to be proven wrong.

The FBI, for instance, says that phone records searches showed no links to the house and the hijackers. Christensen’s confidential source says the opposite is true. If the FBI is right, Christensen asks, then why not just release the information and put the dispute to rest?

“I’ve spent five years on this. I’ve got other things to do. If there’s nothing to this, then tell me,” Christensen told The Daily Beast.

The public record so far has hardly allayed Christensen and others belief that there’s more to the Sarasota story than the FBI is telling. Indeed, they say, the FBI is contradicting its own investigators. Graham told The Daily Beast that the FBI questioned the reliability of the agent who filed the first reports about the family and possible connections to the attackers. They said he was “not a good writer and should not be taken as the last word,” Graham said.

But that agent was reportedly promoted after the 9/11 attacks and assigned to a counter-intelligence task force. The bureau doesn’t usually give new jobs to agents who can’t do basic field work, particularly on the biggest case in FBI history.

As far as Christensen is concerned, the truth will out. But the FBI’s silence is telling.

Not to be content with just the 80,000 pages, though, Christensen has also been pressing to get those 28 pages from the congressional inquiry released. They currently have an appeal pending before the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, an obscure group within the National Archives that has the power to declassify the material, in whole or in part.

An Archives official wouldn’t comment on the appeal, except to say that the panel has yet to officially take it up. According to a public docket, the appeal was filed in July 2014.

President Obama could elect to declassify the pages himself. Or he could defer to the judgment of the panel. Doing so would give him some political cover. It would also allow the president to make good on his commitment to finally let the public see what those pages have to say.

If that day finally comes, credit will surely go to Graham, who has pressed for their release for years. But some share may also be claimed by Christensen and Julin, whose hunt for the Sarasota connection led them to shake loose the 28 pages, too.

Both men said that the release of that better-known material may ultimately help bring the Sarasota files to light.

“If the 28 pages are declassified, that might persuade the judge to move forward,” Julin said. He doesn’t think the congressional report has anything to say about Sarasota—because, after all, Graham has said the FBI gave his committee nothing on the case—but “the material might help Judge Zloch see the wider significance of the events in Sarasota and persuade him that some or all of the records have not been properly classified,” Julin said.

Christensen noted that the Obama administration didn’t publicly acknowledge that it might soon release the 28 pages until after Graham and other lawmakers appeared in a recent episode of 60 Minutes about the controversy. He said he hopes the judge saw the show, and that the “intense national interest” that’s brewing around Saudi connections to 9/11 might resonate with him.

Two years or waiting for the judge’s ruling may be close to an end. “I believe this is not a stalling tactic at all. The judge is doing what he he as to comply” with rules for handling classified information, Christensen said. “But I would urge him to speed it up.”