Maj. John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), is the former Executive
Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. In testimony
before a 2005 Congressional briefing, he said, “It falls to me this morning
to bring to your attention the story of Saeed Sheikh, whose full name is
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and his astonishing rise to power in Al
Qaeda, his crucial role in 9/11, which is completely, utterly, missing from
the 9/11 Commission report …
“The 9/11 Commission which studied US intelligence and law enforcement
community performance in great detail, (maybe not so much great detail,
but they did), neglected to cover the community’s performance during the
weeks following the attacks to determine who was responsible for them,
not a word about that in the Report.
“The Report does discuss the immediate US responses but the immediate
investigation is never addressed, and anyone who has closely studied the
post-9/11 investigation knows that the first breakthrough came two weeks
into the investigation when the money transfers from the United Arab
Emirates to the hijackers were uncovered.
“Furthermore, if you have studied that investigation, you know there is no
disputing that while investigators may have struggled with the identity of
the paymaster, they were clear about one thing, he was Al Qaeda’s
finance chief. For this reason alone you have to ask why the 9/11
Commission Report never mentions the finance chief’s role as the 9/11
paymaster.”