Tuesday 12 July 2022 05:12 PM Biden must demand accountability for the Kingdom's role in murdering our loved ... trends now

Terry Strada (@TerrySStrada) is the National Chair of 9/11 Families United. Her husband, Tom, died in the World Trade Center's North Tower in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The United States suffered its worst terrorist attack over 20 years ago when 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and murdered 2,977 people on September 11, 2001, causing injuries to thousands more.

Over 3,000 children lost a parent, some lost both.

Like most victims' families, I was left to navigate in a post 9/11 world filled with overwhelming sadness, fear, and uncertainty.

Nothing about my life, including raising my three children who were seven, four and four days old has been easy since that heartbreaking day when their father was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

The challenges of single parenthood came with a constant barrage of additional questions that I needed answers to; Who would attack us so violently? Why would they want to murder thousands on American soil? How did such a horrific attack happen?

I have committed the last 20 years to working with various members of the 9/11 community and our nation's lawmakers in uncovering evidence that would put an end to my burning questions.

We all deserve the truth, and if the United States is going to do its best to prevent another catastrophic attack motivated by the Islamist hate-filled ideology that inspired September 11, we need a full accounting from the Kingdom.

President Joe Biden is traveling to Jeddah this week to meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman al Saud.

Will he be the first president to look a Saudi leader in the eye and demand accountability for Saudi Arabia's complicity in the 9/11 attacks?

The early signs are troubling.

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post this past weekend, the President outlined his reasons for traveling to the Kingdom without a single mention of Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks.

He applauded himself for releasing the intelligence community's report on the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

He boasted that he, 'will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there'.

Yet failed to even mention that his administration has also declassified thousands of documents concerning Saudi support for al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorists.

Those documents were kept secret by the U.S. government for years. And most of these revelations were not available to the 9/11 Commission, which was ostensibly created to prepare a full accounting of the circumstances of the attack.

In fact, throughout the past two decades past presidents have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the U.S relationship with the Kingdom.

This included excising information regarding the Saudis' role in September 11 from a 2002 U.S. congressional inquiry, attempting to deny the 9/11 families from their day in court by vetoing counter-terrorism legislation allowing us to sue the Saudi government, and most recently President Trump's reneging on a promise to declassify FBI documents to the greatest extent possible.