Claims Against Saudis Cast New Light on Secret Pages of 9/11 Report - NYT | U.S. Joins Europe in Effort to End Fighting in Ukraine - NYT | "...the most deadly accident in the history of the Metro-North Railroad, with six people killed and more than a dozen injured after the collision in Valhalla, in Westchester County... investigators worked to understand why a car became stranded on the tracks... many questions remained unanswered. Specifically... in these types of accidents, train passengers are rarely killed." - from: Investigation Underway in Metro-North Train Crash - NYT
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"Officials investigating a train-car collision in Westchester County, New York, today are examining physical evidence at the scene and units that recorded train and car signals -- but they say they can't get away from a question at the core of the case: Why would an SUV driver pull forward into the path of an oncoming train?
"We're going to do everything we can to try and understand that key fact: Why was that car stopped on the tracks?" National Transportation Safety Board vice chairman Robert Sumwalt said today.
A motorist who said he was in the car behind Ellen Brody, 49, a mother of three, told ABC News after Tuesday's accident that he even backed up to allow Brody to get out of harm's way.
"I’m waiting for her to back up and she moves forward," Rick Hope said. "And she moves forward probably 15 feet right in front of the train. She looked very calm and she took what I thought was an awful long time because I’m thinking the clock is ticking here. The lights are flashing, the gate’s down, you don’t have much time. And I didn’t know what to do. I indicated that I was backing up ... but she looked at me -- I know she did. She got in and all I can imagine is she was trying to make it to the other side."
Metro-North train service resumed this morning at the site of Tuesday’s deadly collision that killed Brody and five passengers.
Service had been shut down in the area around the crash site, which happened near Valhalla on the service’s Harlem Line.
Some 400 feet of the electrified third rail sliced through the train’s first car following the collision, burning the interior of the car and killing five passengers, Sumwalt said Wednesday."
Investigators Want to Know Why Woman Drove Onto Tracks - ABC News
 ABC News |
Investigators Want to Know Why Woman Drove Onto Tracks
ABC News Officials investigating a train-car collision in Westchester County, New York, today are examining physical evidence at the scene and units that recorded train and car signals -- but they say they can't get away from a question at the core of the case: Why would ... and more » |
"...the most deadly accident in the history of the Metro-North Railroad, with six people killed and more than a dozen injured after the collision in Valhalla, in Westchester County... investigators worked to understand why a car became stranded on the tracks... many questions remained unanswered. Specifically... in these types of accidents, train passengers are rarely killed." - from:
Investigation Underway in Metro-North Train Crash - NYT
"The accident comes just weeks after an electrical problem sent smoke into a District of Columbia Metro train, killing one and injuring dozens. In the Jan. 12 accident, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority train that had just left busy commuter station L'Enfant Plaza was stuck in a tunnel as smoke filled the cars, killing a government contractor and injuring more than 80 people. The National Transportation Safety Board is looking at the cause of the malfunction." - from 6 dead, multiple injuries as train strikes SUV in N.Y.
See also: Washington DC L'Enfant station accident - GS
When a crowded commuter train slammed into a car on the tracks on Tuesday night, it dislodged the electrified third rail, which, combined with gasoline from the vehicle, created a deadly inferno, federal investigators said at a news conference Wednesday evening.
“The entire interior of the first rail car was burned out,” said Robert L. Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The result was the most deadly accident in the history of the Metro-North Railroad, with six people killed and more than a dozen injured after the collision in Valhalla, in Westchester County.
Even as investigators worked to understand why a car became stranded on the tracks, Mr. Sumwalt offered some explanation for why the accident was so deadly.
He said the train plowed the car 1,000 feet down the tracks and, as it went along, tore up 400 feet of electrified rail.
That rail, he said, first penetrated the car “behind and below the driver’s seat” and exited the car by the right rear tire. It then pierced the train, breaking up in 80-foot segments. At least one of those segments penetrated the second rail car.
The commuter train struck a vehicle on the tracks in Valhalla, N.Y.
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But he said many questions remained unanswered. Specifically, he said, in these types of accidents, train passengers are rarely killed.
“Usually it is not endangering the occupants of the train,” he said. “We intend to find out what makes this accident different.”
Mr. Sumwalt said it also remained unclear why the S.U.V. was on the tracks, noting that investigators would continue to look into whether any warning signals malfunctioned.
The driver of the vehicle was identified as Ellen Brody, a 49-year-old mother of three children who lived in Greenburgh.
On Tuesday, she left the store she worked at in Chappaqua, ICD Contemporary Jewelry, around 6 p.m. She was on her way to Scarsdale to meet a friend, according to co-workers.
When she did not return home, one of Ms. Brody’s daughters called a colleague of hers asking where she might be. At 11 p.m. the police informed her husband that she had been killed in the crash.
“It’s been a very difficult time,” said Virginia Shasha, a colleague who spent the night with the family. “It’s their mother. Their world has shattered.”
Rick Hope, who was in the car directly behind Ms. Brody’s Mercedes S.U.V., said her car was stopped on the road just before the tracks but in front of the crossing arm. He watched as the red lights began to flash, warning bells rang and the crossing arm came down on the back of her car.
“As soon as I see the gate go down, I back up,” Mr. Hope said outside his Yorktown Heights home on Wednesday evening. “I say, ‘She’s going to back up as soon as she sees what’s going on.'”
But instead, Ms. Brody calmly got out of her car. She walked around the back, pushed up against the guardrail, and found it wedged firmly in place.
Mr. Hope said he began to panic, knowing a train would plow through in seconds. He said he motioned with his hands at Ms. Brody to come toward him. Knowing his headlights were on, possibly blocking her from seeing him, he backed his car up more, thinking she might copy his behavior.
For a split second, he said, she looked at him. He thought she might walk away from the car.
“She looks at me, that’s the disturbing part,” he said. “I was waiting for her to say, ‘What do I do?’ That’s easy — come here!”
Instead she walked back to the driver’s seat and climbed in. There was a pause, as if she were buckling her seat belt.
“The thing’s dinging, red lights are flashing, it’s going off,” Mr. Hope said. “I just remember going, ‘Hurry up.’ I just knew she was going to back up — never in my wildest dreams did I think she’d go forward.”
She drove forward.
“It was just instantaneous,” he said. “She was gone.”
Even as officials revised the number of people killed on Wednesday morning to six from seven, the families of those involved had to deal with an agonizing wait for information because many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition.
The five train passengers who died were all men, according to a county official.
One of the people injured remained in critical condition and one was in serious condition, and the rest were either stable or had been released from the hospital, officials at the Westchester County Medical Center told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.
The survivors’ injuries included burns, smoke inhalation, fractures, lacerations, contusions and some crush injuries.
As the day went on, friends, relatives and co-workers began to confirm that their loved ones were presumed dead.
One victim was Walter Liedtke, the curator of European paintings for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In an email, the museum said it was still awaiting official confirmation.
“But it appears as though he was among the victims in the first car,” the director of the museum, Thomas P. Campbell, wrote to the staff. “We are all shocked by this news and have his entire family, particularly his wife Nancy, in our thoughts.”
Another victim was identified as Eric Vandercar, 53, who was on his way home to Bedford Hills, N.Y., at the time of the crash, according to a statement released by the company where he worked, Mesirow Financial.
“Eric was not only a pillar in our industry, he was a great partner and friend to many,” the statement said. “Our entire Mesirow family is hurting and our deepest sympathies are extended to his wife, Jill, and their family.”
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, appearing on several morning television interviews, said that there was significant traffic near the railroad crossing where the accident happened and that it did not seem that Ms. Brody, who was in her Mercedes S.U.V., was trying to beat the train at the crossing at Commerce Street in Valhalla.
Instead, he said, it was more likely that she was somehow confused.
In the moments after the crash, witnesses described a horrifying scene in the first car of the train, which quickly became filled with smoke and flames.
“People started falling over each other,” said one witness, Chris Gross, appearing on “Good Morning America’’ on ABC. He was tossed into the aisle and saw flames, and he heard a man in front of him screaming. He described how even injured passengers struggled to help others get out of the burning car.
In a reflection of the confusion following the crash, and the extent of the damage to both the train and the car, information about the number of people killed, the make of the car involved in the accident and the exact location of the crash has changed.
Anthony Bottalico, general chairman of the Association of Commuter Rail Employees, a Metro-North union, said the train’s operator applied emergency brakes as soon as he saw something on the tracks.
“He did everything he was supposed to do,” Mr. Bottalico said.
The operator, Mr. Bottalico added, had evacuated several passengers before being overcome by smoke inhalation.
“He hung in there as long as he could,” Mr. Bottalico said. The operator remains hospitalized, he said.
The operator had been on the job nine months as a locomotive engineer, he said, and has been with the railroad for three years.
On Wednesday morning, the smell of smoke still filled the air as investigators combed over the wreckage.
Metro-North has been under intense scrutiny after a series of crashes that killed six people in less than a year, including a derailment in 2013 on the Hudson line that left four commuters dead in the Bronx. A federal report released last year was highly critical of the railroad.
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the crash site on Wednesday and took over the investigation.
Speaking to reporters, Robert L. Sumwalt, a member of the board, said a full investigation would take about a year, though if the safety board’s findings warranted “immediate attention,” it could issue an urgent safety recommendation far more quickly.
In particular, investigators will focus on the crossing arms, rail traffic signals and highway signals; each device has a recorder on it, Mr. Sumwalt said. The recorders have been secured and will be studied by experts, he added.
The board’s on-scene investigation should take five to seven days, Mr. Sumwalt said.
But a Metro-North official said some service on the Harlem line, which runs between Grand Central Terminal and Wassaic, N.Y., in Dutchess County, was expected to be restored sooner, possibly as early as Thursday.
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KIEV, Ukraine — With the White House weighing whether to send arms to Ukraine, Western nations intensified efforts Thursday to bring an end to the fighting.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France are traveling to Kiev on Thursday to hold talks with President Petro O. Poroschenko of Ukraine, officials from the two countries said. On Friday, the German and French leaders are to continue to Moscow, where they are to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
Mr. Hollande said that he and Ms. Merkel would present an initiative to end the fighting and guarantee the “full territorial integrity” of Ukraine.
The German and French moves were announced as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kiev for high-level talks. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepared for parallel consultations on Friday with European leaders in Brussels.
The accelerated Western diplomatic efforts came as the Obama administration was considering whether to send antitank missiles, battlefield radars, reconnaissance drones and other arms to help Ukraine’s beleaguered forces stave off attacks by the Russian-backed separatists and to build pressure on Moscow to seek a political settlement.
The challenge is to restore a peace agreement that was negotiated in Belarus in September but that has been repeatedly violated since then, more seriously by separatists and Russia.
Russia has funneled tanks, rockets and other heavy weapons to the separatists in eastern Ukraine, and has sent about 1,000 of its own troops there to help the separatists with their offensive, according to NATO estimates.
Since the accord was signed in Minsk, the Russian-backed separatists have taken control of about 200 square miles in the country, including the airport at Donetsk, and they are currently threateningDebaltseve, a town that sits astride a critical rail hub.
The assessment of some senior Western officials is that Mr. Putin is trying to supplant the Minsk agreement with a new arrangement that would expand the Kremlin’s influence over Ukraine and would give the separatists a larger, and more economically viable, enclave.
Mr. Kerry, who will announce $16.4 million in humanitarian assistance to help people in eastern Ukraine, plans to press for a new cease-fire.
In a joint appearance with Mr. Poroshenko, Mr. Kerry said that Germany, France and United States were united in supporting a peaceful resolution. And he called for Russia to agree to a cease-fire.
“Our choice is a peaceful solution, but Russia needs to make its choices,” Mr. Kerry said. ”There must be an immediate commitment now to a real cease-fire, which is not just a piece of paper.”
Mr. Kerry noted that Moscow had violated previous cease-fires by sending weapons and troops to eastern Ukraine.
In his statement, Mr. Kerry made no mention of the ongoing discussions in the Obama administration over whether to send arms for Ukraine’s forces or what steps the United States might take if Russia continued its military support for the separatists.
The Obama administration’s hope is that its widely reported deliberations over whether to send defensive weapons to Ukraine and about additional economic sanctions will be sufficient to induce the Russians to agree to a halt in the fighting and, ultimately, to a political agreement within the framework of the Minsk accord.
But Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden will also be consulting with European leaders about ways to increase pressure on the Kremlin in the absence of a political resolution. Ms. Merkel plans to go to Washington on Monday, and Mr. Obama could decide on whether to send defensive lethal aid soon after.
“We’ve got to test that now as the talk of pressure increases in the United States, in Europe," a senior State Department official said, referring to the effort to restore a cease-fire.
“We have a Russian government that is talking the talk of cease-fire, talking the talk of peace, even as it fuels this conflict,” said the official, who could not be identified under the agency’s protocol for briefing reporters.
“So the question is: If the governments of Ukraine, of the United States, of Europe are appealing now for a new sit-down, will the Kremlin spurn that or will they sit down? And will they push their proxies to do the same?”
Mr. Hollande said France did not favor Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but he also said that France would not participate in the debate on whether to provide weapons to Ukraine.
“It will not be said that France and Germany together have not tried everything, undertaken everything to preserve the peace,” he said.
In Moscow, Yuri Ushakov, a senior Kremlin foreign policy adviser, was quoted by Russian news services as saying that Moscow hoped that any plan presented by Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande would take into account earlier proposals that Mr. Putin made on ending the crisis in Ukraine. The meeting was a “positive step,” he was quoted as saying.
During his visit to Kiev, Mr. Kerry plans to meet Mr. Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
Mr. Biden will be meeting on Friday in Brussels with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council; Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief; and other senior European leaders.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden will then travel to Munich, where a security conference is being held, and for a joint meeting with Ms. Merkel and Mr. Poroshenko. Mr. Kerry also plans to meet separately there with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
“We do have three different issue areas in play,” a senior official in the Obama administration said on Wednesday, discussing Mr. Biden’s trip. “One is the potential to increase the costs to Russia through economic measures. The second is to make sure that Ukraine has the financial support it needs moving forward. And the third is to enhance Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and thereby give the Russians and the separatists a greater incentive to negotiate an end to the conflict.”
Russia's support for the separatists far outstrips the assistance the United States and European nations have provided to Ukraine.
The Russians have sent modern T-80 tanks, whose armor cannot be penetrated by Ukraine's aging and largely inoperative antitank weapons, along with Grad rockets and other heavy weapons. Russian forces have also used electronic jamming equipment to interfere with the Ukrainians’ communications.
In contrast, the Obama administration has promised about $118 million for training and nonlethal equipment for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, State Border Guard Service and National Guard. But only half of that aid has actually been delivered, State Department officials acknowledge.
The United States is also preparing plans for $120 million in additional training and equipment.
Ukraine has requested arms and equipment, including ammunition, sniper rifles, mortars, grenade launchers, antitank missiles, armored personnel carriers, mobile field hospitals, counterbattery radars and reconnaissance drones.
The Russians have a history of advancing proposals in negotiations that contain enough hints of flexibility, along with their demands, to undermine the push for tougher sanctions in Europe.
The $16.4 million in aid that Mr. Kerry will announce in Kiev is intended to help people trapped by the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. The aid will be used to buy basic items like blankets and clothing, along with counseling for traumatized civilians and to help those who have fled the fighting.
The funds will support the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other international organizations. Including the $16.4 million, American humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the crisis is more than $38 million, the State Department said.
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — During the 1980s and ’90s, the historic alliance between the wealthy monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the country’s powerful clerics emerged as the major financier of international jihad, channeling tens of millions of dollars to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Among the project’s major patrons was Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who last month became Saudi Arabia’s king.
Some of those fighters later formed Al Qaeda, which declared war on the United States and later mounted major attacks inside Saudi Arabia as well. In the past decade, according to officials of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Saudi government has become a valuable partner against terrorism, battling Al Qaeda at home and last year joining the American-led coalition against the extremists of the Islamic State.
Yet Saudi Arabia continues to be haunted by what some suspect was a tacit alliance with Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those suspicions burst out in the open again this week with the disclosure of a prison deposition of a former Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, who claimed that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures were donors to the terror group and that a Saudi diplomat in Washington discussed with him a plot to shoot down Air Force One.
Saudi officials have staunchly denied those claims, noting that Mr. Moussaoui was a convicted terrorist with a history of mental troubles and little to lose by spreading lies about Saudi officials. On Wednesday, experts on the kingdom also expressed strong doubts about Mr. Moussaoui’s claims.
By 1994, when Osama bin Laden was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and banned from the kingdom, the Qaeda founder was “writing nonstop against the Saudi regime with the idea of toppling it,” said Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton. “That the Saudis would knowingly support a movement that sought to destroy them makes no sense to me.”
But Mr. Moussaoui’s sensational allegations have drawn attention in part because far more credible figures, including some members of the national 9/11 Commission, believe the Saudi role in the attacks has never been adequately examined. More broadly, the episode has drawn new attention to Saudi Arabia’s longtime policy of using its oil wealth to try to shape foreign battlefields, currently by backing militants in Syria and Libya, and the reactionary religious ideology that underlies its society.
Throughout the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and the United States were partners in bankrolling the mujahedeen, hailed as freedom fighters by President Ronald Reagan, who were battling the Soviet military in Afghanistan.
Some of those fighters coalesced under the leadership of Bin Laden in 1988 to form Al Qaeda, which soon put the Saudi state on its list of enemies along with the United States. While private Saudi support for Bin Laden’s organization continued to flow, experts who study the kingdom said they doubted it would have come from top officials like those named by Mr. Moussaoui, at least after 1994.
The investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, would most likely have turned up such high-level support if it existed, said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University, who studies Saudi Arabia.
Among the donors Mr. Moussaoui said were in a Qaeda database that he helped create were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Both held high positions in the very government that Al Qaeda was by the late 1990s seeking to destroy, Mr. Gause said.
Charles W. Freeman Jr., who served as United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1988 to 1992, said he had tried to warn Saudi officials of the dangers of religious extremism, at first with little success. But that changed during the ’90s, he said.
“By the time Zacarias Moussaoui claims he was listing these people as supporters, they were anything but,” Mr. Freeman said.
A third prominent name Mr. Moussaoui listed was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a fabulously wealthy investor who whose television channels air racy music videos and who employs men and women side by side in his offices.
“I doubt he would be a natural supporter of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Gause said.
In an emailed response to questions, Prince Alwaleed’s office said that “the charges made by Mr. Moussaoui, a convicted criminal, are patently and absurdly false,” adding that “Prince Alwaleed has never hesitated to condemn Al Qaeda and its allies.”
Three of the Saudi princes accused by the Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui have strong diplomatic and business ties to the United States.
Prince Turki now heads a research institute in Riyadh and travels often to the United States, where he meets with officials. Prince Bandar was recently relieved of his post as the head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council. Prince Turki did not respond to requests for comment, and Prince Bandar could not be reached for comment.
Saudi officials pointed to assertions of Mr. Moussaoui’s defense lawyers in 2002 that he “suffers from a psychotic mental disease” that included “grandiose delusions.” Despite those claims, however, the judge at his 2006 trial pronounced him competent and praised his intelligence before sentencing him to life in prison.
Mr. Moussaoui is a prolific writer of letters to judges, and it was his letter offering to testify in a long-running lawsuit of 9/11 survivors against Saudi Arabia that led to his deposition last October. Two weeks later, he wrote a federal judge in Oklahoma accusing Prince Turki of instructing a Saudi official to help the future 9/11 hijackers. He also claimed that Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, “gave me money” and sent a large amount of money to the Saudi hijackers.
He offered no details except to say that he had met Prince Turki in Norman, Okla., in 2001. A search of news stories from that period turned up no references to a visit by the Saudi intelligence chief to Oklahoma that year. Some specialists on Saudi Arabia noted that Mr. Moussaoui and some of the hijackers were students who could have received financial support that had nothing to do with the attack plans.
The ultimate turn in Saudi counterterrorism policy came after 2003, when Al Qaeda mounted attacks inside the kingdom. “I don’t think Saudi Arabia really grasped the domestic threat that they posed until early in this century when there were explosions and they started killing people,” Mr. Freeman said.
Since then, American officials have praised the Saudi government for cracking down on militants inside the kingdom and for acting to stop terrorist financing by Saudi citizens. But the kingdom has continued to support militant groups other than Al Qaeda and armed tribes that it sees as advancing its policies in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. And at home, the kingdom’s traditional religious establishment promotes and enforces a strict interpretation of Islam.
Saudi ways are as alien to Americans as gender equality and sexual freedom in the United States are to many Saudis. Cultural difference have long fueled suspicions on both sides, despite close economic and security ties, said Thomas W. Lippman, author of two books on the kingdom. “At the ideological level, it’s a relationship of mutual revulsion,” he said.
Correction: February 5, 2015
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the father of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The father is Prince Talal, not King Faisal.
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WASHINGTON — A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism.
Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi Arabian government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried unsuccessfully to declassify.
“I think it is the right thing to do,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts and an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”
White House officials say the administration has undertaken a review on whether to release the pages but has no timetable for when they might be made public.
Three of the Saudi princes accused by the Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui have strong diplomatic and business ties to the United States.
Mr. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in December 2002.
Mr. Graham has repeatedly said it shows that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Mr. Graham said last month as he pressed for the pages to be made public.
Relatives of those killed on Sept. 11 as well as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against Saudi Arabia have also demanded that the pages be made public, seeing them as the vital link that they believe connects an important ally of the United States to the deadly attacks. They say the pages, Part 4 of the report, could also help in determining the source of current funding for terrorist activities.
“If we stop funding of terrorism and hold those people accountable, wouldn’t it make a dent in the financing of terrorism today?” asked William Doyle, whose son, Joseph, was killed in the World Trade Center. Mr. Doyle said that President Obama personally assured him after the death of Osama bin Laden that he would declassify that section of the report.
Proponents of releasing Part 4, titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain National Security Matters,” have suggested that the Bush and Obama administrations have held it back for fear of alienating an influential military and economic partner rather than for any national security consideration.
Others familiar with that section of the report say that while it might implicate Saudi Arabia, the suspicions, investigatory leads and other findings it contains did not withstand deeper scrutiny. Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the national commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks after the congressional panels, said the commission followed up on the allegations, using some of the same personnel who wrote them initially, but reached a different conclusion.
“Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of Al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” the commission said in its July 2004 report. It did note, however, the “likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to Al Qaeda.”
Mr. Zelikow pointed to the more thorough investigation undertaken by the commission.
“Those involved in the preparation of the famous 28 pages joined the staff of the 9/11 Commission and participated in the follow-up investigation of all the leads that had been developed earlier,” he said Wednesday. “In doing so, they were aided by a larger team with more members, more powers and for the first time actually conducted interviews of relevant people both in this country and in Saudi Arabia.”
“And what we found is reflected in the commission report,” he said.
Demands for the release of the 28 pages began soon after the intelligence committees finished their work. In 2003, more than 40 senators called on Mr. Bush to order the material’s disclosure. He refused, saying “we won’t reveal sources and methods that will compromise our efforts to succeed” in fighting terrorism.
The Saudi government has also said it favored making the 28 pages public because that would make it easier to refute what it said were unfounded allegations. The embassy said Wednesday that it stood by that position.
Representative Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican pushing for the release of Part 4, said the Moussaoui claims might give momentum to the declassification effort. He said he was approached Wednesday on the House floor by lawmakers inquiring how to view the 28 pages.
But there seemed to be little appetite for declassification among the Republican leaders of the intelligence panels. Senator Richard M. Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was skeptical of the value of releasing the pages, calling them more of a historical document in a fight against terrorism that has shifted substantially since 2002.
“There may have been a level of participation by some Muslim country that is not commensurate with today,” he said.
Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said “the authority to declassify this document lies with President Obama.”
Advocates of releasing the document have been frustrated by Mr. Obama, noting that Democrats were much more aggressive in pushing for its disclosure when Mr. Bush was president.
Mr. Doyle and Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, was killed on Sept. 11 in the World Trade Center, say the president assured them during separate meetings with families of the victims of the attack that he saw no reason the document should be withheld.
Mr. Doyle said he encouraged Mr. Obama at a meeting in May 2011 with surviving family members to follow through on a pledge he made two years earlier to Ms. Breitweiser. “He said: ‘Bill, I know about the pages. I promise I am going to get them released,’ ” Mr. Doyle recounted.
The White House said it was responding to the calls to consider releasing the material.
“This administration, in response to a congressional request, last year asked the intelligence community to conduct a classification review of this material,” said Edward C. Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We did so in keeping with the standard procedure for determining whether classified information can be publicly released without jeopardizing national security. That process is ongoing.”
Correction: February 5, 2015
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the father of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. He is the son of Prince Talal, not King Faisal.
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· · · · · · ·
KIEV, Ukraine — With the White House weighing whether to send arms to Ukraine, Western nations intensified efforts Thursday to bring an end to the fighting.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and President François Hollande of France are traveling to Kiev on Thursday to hold talks with President Petro O. Poroschenko of Ukraine, officials from the two countries said. On Friday, the French and German leaders are to continue to Moscow, where they are to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
Mr. Hollande said that he and Ms. Merkel would present a new initiative to end the fighting and guarantee the “full territorial integrity” of Ukraine.
The German and French moves were announced as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here for high level talks. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepared for parallel consultations on Friday with European leaders in Brussels.
The accelerated Western diplomatic efforts came as the Obama administration was considering whether to send anti-tank missiles, battlefield radars, reconnaissance drones and other arms to help Ukaine’s beleaguered forces stave off attacks by the Russian-backed separatists and build pressure on Moscow to seek a political settlement.
The challenge is to restore a peace agreement that was hammered out in Belarus in September but has been repeatedly violated since then, more seriously by separatists and Russia.
Russia has funneled tanks, rockets and other heavy weapons to the separatists in eastern Ukraine, and has sent about 1,000 of its own troops there to help the separatists with their offensive, according to NATO estimates.
Since the accord was signed in Minsk, the Russian-backed separatists have taken control of about 200 square miles, including the airport at Donetsk, and they are currently threatening Debaltseve, a town that sits astride a critical rail hub.
The assessment of some senior Western officials is that Mr. Putin is trying to supplant the Minsk agreement with a new arrangement that would expand the Kremlin’s influence over Ukraine and would give the separatists a larger, and more economically viable, enclave.
Mr. Kerry, who will announce $16.4 million in humanitarian assistance to help people in eastern Ukraine, plans to press for a new cease-fire.
The Obama administration’s hope is that its widely reported deliberations over whether to send defensive weapons to Ukraine and about consideration of additional economic sanctions will be sufficient to induce the Russians to agree to a halt in the fighting and, ultimately, to a political agreement within the framework of the Minsk accord.
But Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden will also be consulting with European leaders about ways to increase the pressure on the Kremlin in the absence of a political resolution. Ms. Merkel plans to go to Washington on Monday, and Mr. Obama could decide on whether to send defensive lethal aid soon after.
“We’ve got to test that now as the talk of pressure increases in the United States, in Europe," a senior State Department official said, referring to the effort to restore a cease-fire.
“We have a Russian government that is talking the talk of cease-fire, talking the talk of peace, even as it fuels this conflict,” said the official who could not be identified under the agency’s protocol for briefing reporters.
“So the question is: If the governments of Ukraine, of the United States, of Europe are appealing now for a new sit-down, will the Kremlin spurn that or will they sit down? And will they push their proxies to do the same?”
Mr. Hollande said France did not favor Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but he also said that France will not participate in the debate on whether to provide weapons to Ukraine.
“It will not be said that France and Germany together have not tried everything, undertaken everything to preserve the peace,” he said.
During his visit to Kiev, Mr. Kerry plans to meet Mr. Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
Mr. Biden will be meeting on Friday in Brussels with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and other senior European leaders.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden will then meet up in Munich, where a security conference is being held, for a joint meeting with Ms. Merkel and Mr. Poroshenko. Mr. Kerry also plans to meet separately there with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
“We do have three different issue areas in play,” a senior administration official said on Wednesday, discussing Mr. Biden’s trip. “One is the potential to increase the costs to Russia through economic measures. The second is to make sure that Ukraine has the financial support it needs moving forward. And the third is to enhance Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and thereby give the Russians and the separatists a greater incentive to negotiate an end to the conflict.”
Russia's support for the separatists far outstrips the assistance the United States and European nations have provided to Ukraine.
The Russians have sent modern T-80 tanks, whose armor cannot be penetrated by Ukraine's aging and largely inoperative anti-tank weapons, along with Grad rockets and other heavy weapons. Russian forces have also used electronic jamming equipment to interfere with the Ukrainians communications.
In contrast, the Obama administration has promised about $118 million for training and nonlethal equipment for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, State Border Guard Service and National Guard. But only half of that aid actually been delivered, State Department officials acknowledge.
The United States is also preparing plans for $120 million in additional training and equipment.
Ukraine has submitted a long request for arms and equipment, including ammunition, sniper rifles, mortars, grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles, armored personnel carriers, mobile field hospitals, counterbattery radars and reconnaissance drones.
The Russians have a history of advancing negotiating proposals that contain enough hints of flexibility, along with their demands, to undermine the push for tougher sanctions in Europe.
The $16.4 million in aid that Mr. Kerry will announce in Kiev is intended to help people trapped by the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. The aid will be used to buy basic items like blankets and clothing, along with counseling for traumatized civilians and to help those who have fled the fighting.
The funds will support the work by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other international organizations. Including the $16.4 million, the United States’ humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the crisis began is more than $38 million, the State Department said.
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A Two-Pronged Approach by U.S. to End Fighting in Ukraineby By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Visits by John Kerry to Kiev, Ukraine, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Brussels will focus on trying to restore a peace agreement that has been repeatedly violated.
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French and German leaders will make new proposals for peace in Ukraine in a joint visit to Kiev today and Moscow tomorrow.
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