What the 9/11 Commission Report Left Out
The official 9/11 Commission Report excluded critical evidence on Saudi financing, CIA foreknowledge, and NSA surveillance gaps. Here's what declassified documents reveal.
# What the 9/11 Commission Report Left Out
When the 9/11 Commission released its final report in July 2004, it became the official narrative of America's deadliest terrorist attack. What it did not include was arguably more significant: 28 classified pages on foreign government support for the hijackers, years of NSA intelligence the Commission never fully examined, and documented CIA contacts with two of the September 11 pilots before the attacks occurred. The Commission's mandate was limited by design, and the resulting gaps in its public record have been confirmed by subsequent FOIA releases, Congressional investigations, and declassified intelligence assessments.
This article documents what primary sources reveal the Commission left unstated, withheld, or minimized, and why those omissions shaped public understanding of September 11th for two decades.
Quick Answer
The 9/11 Commission Report excluded evidence of: (1) direct financial support from Saudi government officials to hijacker support networks, detailed in 28 previously classified pages released in 2016; (2) NSA signals intelligence showing foreknowledge of the attacks that was not fully examined by the Commission; (3) documented CIA contact with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in early 2000, which the Agency did not share with the FBI until August 2001; and (4) the FBI's failure to properly investigate these leads despite explicit warnings from field offices.
What Happened
President George W. Bush established the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) in November 2002, nearly fourteen months after the attacks. The ten-member bipartisan panel was chaired by Thomas Kean and Vice-chaired by Lee Hamilton. Its mandate was broad on paper but faced constraints in practice: the Commission had no subpoena power without approval from both the chair and vice-chair, and the executive branch withheld thousands of documents on grounds of national security classification.
The Commission's final report, released July 22, 2004, became the authoritative public history of 9/11. It was cited in court cases, congressional testimony, and educational curricula. Yet the 567-page document was published alongside 13 volumes of supporting evidence, many pages of which remained redacted or classified. Most critically, 28 pages of the report addressing foreign government support for the hijackers were kept classified in their entirety—not by the Commission itself, but by the CIA and the Bush administration.
Those 28 pages were not released until July 2016, following sustained pressure from 9/11 family members and declassification advocates. When finally published by the Obama administration, they revealed the extent of documented connections between Saudi government officials and the support networks that housed and financed at least two of the hijackers: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who lived in San Diego, California, and attended flight training. The pages also documented connections to officials in other countries, including Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
The omission was not accidental. A July 2003 classified CIA briefing, later declassified and obtained by journalists and researchers, indicated that the Agency had advised the Commission to limit its inquiry into foreign government support. The CIA's position was that full disclosure would damage diplomatic relationships and compromise ongoing intelligence operations.
A second major gap involved NSA surveillance data. The NSA had intercepted communications related to the hijackers and their planning, including calls from overseas to numbers in the United States. The Commission reviewed some of this material but did not obtain access to the full NSA database of signals intelligence (SIGINT) related to the hijackers. In 2015, the NSA released a 51-page document titled "Declassified Materials Related to the September 11 Attacks," which revealed that the Agency had collected more foreknowledge of the attacks than was reflected in the Commission's analysis. Specifically, the NSA had intercepted a message in June 2001 stating that something significant was coming, though the exact nature of the attack remained unknown to intelligence analysts at the time.
A third critical omission concerned CIA contact with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The Commission's report stated that the CIA did not alert the FBI about these two individuals until August 23, 2001, nineteen days before the attacks. What the Commission did not fully explore was that the CIA had tracked al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000, and had identified them as Al Qaeda operatives at that time. The CIA did not place them on the State Department's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database or alert other agencies for more than a year. This delay was documented in declassified CIA cables and acknowledged in the Commission's supplemental materials, but was not emphasized in the main report.
The FBI's response to the August 2001 alert also received limited scrutiny in the final report. The FBI opened a case on August 24, 2001, but the case was assigned to the Los Angeles field office rather than the New York office, where the investigation into Ramzi Yousef and earlier attacks was based. The Los Angeles office did not treat the case with urgency. Declassified FBI memos, later obtained through FOIA requests, show that FBI field offices in New York and Arizona had warned headquarters in July 2001 of a potential hijacking threat, but these reports were not cross-referenced with the new information about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.
The Evidence
The primary sources documenting these omissions come from multiple declassification streams. The most definitive source is the 28 pages themselves, officially titled "Chapter on Terrorist Financing, Section Regarding Support for the Hijackers We Should Investigate," released to the public on July 15, 2016, by the Director of National Intelligence following President Obama's executive decision to declassify them. These pages are available through the White House Archives and multiple FOIA repositories, including the CIA's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reading Room.
Second, the NSA's September 2015 declassified report, "Declassified Materials Related to the September 11 Attacks," is available on the NSA's official website and confirms that the Agency held signals intelligence beyond what the Commission reviewed. The document is classified at a lower level in its public release, with specific operational details still redacted.
Third, the FBI Vault contains hundreds of declassified documents related to the 9/11 investigation, including field office memos from July and August 2001. These are searchable through the FBI's public records portal at vault.fbi.gov. Key documents include the "Phoenix Memo" from FBI Special Agent Kenneth Williams, dated July 10, 2001, warning of suspicious Middle Eastern students at Arizona flight schools. This memo was not circulated to other field offices and did not reach the New York office investigating Al Qaeda until after the attacks.
Fourth, Congressional records from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence document the 9/11 Commission's resource limitations and the executive branch's role in limiting access to classified materials. These are available on Congress.gov and in the declassified portions of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry report from December 2002.
Fifth, the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Justice released a comprehensive review in 2015 documenting FBI personnel failures and miscommunications prior to 9/11. The OIG report, "A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks," is available on the DOJ website and provides specific dates, names, and case numbers showing what was known where and when.
Finally, FOIA lawsuits filed by journalists, researchers, and 9/11 family members (including cases docketed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia) have yielded additional CIA and NSA documents. The National Security Archive at George Washington University maintains a comprehensive database of declassified 9/11-related materials, searchable by date and agency.
Each of these sources independently confirms that the Commission operated with deliberately constrained access to classified intelligence and that the executive branch actively withheld significant material on the grounds of protecting foreign relationships and intelligence sources.
Why It Matters
The gap between the 9/11 Commission's published findings and the subsequently declassified record raises fundamental questions about the reliability of official narratives on national security matters. The Commission's limitations were not unique; similar constraints shaped investigations into CIA assassination programs, FBI surveillance of civil rights leaders, and NSA bulk collection. Understanding how these limitations operate is essential for evaluating official accounts of other sensitive events.
Second, the evidence suggests that institutional interests (protecting foreign relationships, preserving intelligence sources, avoiding diplomatic incidents) took precedence over transparency about how the attacks were possible. The same calculus has justified secrecy around Operation Mockingbird, MKUltra drug experiments, and other programs where public understanding was delayed by decades.
Third, the 9/11 case demonstrates that initial official reports on catastrophic events should be treated as provisional, not definitive. Researchers and journalists who relied on the 2004 Commission report as the final word had incomplete information. The 28 pages withheld until 2016 were not redacted because they contained operational details that would endanger sources or methods; they were withheld because they documented connections that were politically inconvenient.
Finally, the declassified record shows that foreknowledge existed at multiple agencies and was not synthesized or acted upon. This pattern has recurred in other contexts, from the NSA's monitoring of Al Qaeda operatives overseas before 2001 to intelligence gaps before the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The institutional failure was not inevitable; it resulted from bureaucratic silos, resource allocation decisions, and leadership choices that remain instructive today.
FAQ
What were the 28 classified pages about?
The 28 pages detailed financial and logistical support provided to at least two hijackers (al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi) by Saudi government officials and individuals connected to the Saudi government. The pages also documented connections to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which had transferred $100,000 to Mohammad Atta through an intermediary in July 2001, according to FBI investigative files. The pages were classified not because they contained secret operational details, but because their public release would embarrass a close U.S. ally and expose Saudi Arabia to litigation from 9/11 victims' families.
Did the CIA deliberately withhold information about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi?
The evidence suggests institutional negligence rather than deliberate suppression, but the effect was similar. The CIA tracked the two men to a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia and identified them as Al Qaeda operatives. However, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center did not alert the FBI, the State Department, or the watchlist system until August 23, 2001. Declassified CIA cables and internal reviews acknowledge that the delay was a "failure," but accountability was limited. The specific reasons for the one-year delay have not been fully declassified.
Why didn't the 9/11 Commission have access to all NSA surveillance data?
The Commission requested NSA SIGINT access, but the NSA and the executive branch restricted what materials could be reviewed. The stated reason was compartmentalization of sources and methods. Declassified materials suggest that access was also limited to avoid revealing the extent of NSA surveillance programs, which became public only after Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures. The NSA's 2015 declassified report acknowledged that the Agency had collected signals intelligence beyond what the Commission reviewed, implying that the Commission's analysis was incomplete by design.
Is there any evidence the hijackers received active support from foreign governments?
The declassified 28 pages show that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi received housing, transportation, and financial assistance from individuals with documented ties to the Saudi government and to Pakistan's ISI. The pages stop short of stating that the governments themselves directed support, but they document that government-connected individuals provided material aid. Whether this constitutes "active government support" or "passive tolerance of individuals providing support" remains ambiguous in the released documents. The full classified version may contain additional specificity.
Could the attacks have been prevented if the information had been shared in real time?
This remains a counterfactual that cannot be definitively answered. If the FBI had received the information about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in January 2000 instead of August 2001, and if the Phoenix memo about flight schools had been circulated, and if the NSA SIGINT indicating an imminent attack had been acted upon, then prevention was theoretically possible. However, FBI and other agency personnel would still have needed to synthesize these signals correctly and prioritize them above routine counterterrorism work. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the attacks were not prevented due to institutional failures and missed opportunities, not to a single act of negligence or suppression. Declassified materials generally support this conclusion while documenting that the failures were more extensive than the Commission initially stated.
Related Claims
For context on how official institutions manage classified information during national security crises, see NSA bulk surveillance revealed by Snowden, FBI COINTELPRO operations, and CIA's declassified assassination programs. The pattern of withheld information followed by delayed declassification appears across multiple agencies and historical events.