WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc. and Architects & Engineers (AE) for 9/11 Truth are suing federal officials in an effort to have the defendants fully comply with a five-year-old mandate from Congress pertaining to 9/11.
U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray are the defendants in a lawsuit filed on March 25 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging the four federal government respondents failed to adhere to a 2014 mandate implemented by Congress.
The mandate, according to the suit, required the FBI and an external review body it created to implement what “ultimately became known” as the 9/11 Review Commission to “assess any evidence known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” according to the lawsuit.
“The defendants failed to comply with this mandate from Congress in several ways, as reflected in the FBI 9/11 Review Commission’s Report, completed and released March 25, 2015,” the 44-page original petition says.
The mandate in question was a result of the 9/11 Commission’s acknowledgement that “additional evidence relating to the attacks would likely be brought forward after their report was issued."
“Over the 10 years that followed, significant additional evidence regarding the 9/11 attacks was in fact publicly reported, in some cases as a result of ongoing federal government inquiries, and in some cases as a result of ongoing inquiries by concerned citizens and nonprofit organizations,” the suit says.
Court documents explain that the 9/11 Review Commission noted in its report on page 100 that the FBI’s New York and San Diego field offices “have continued to investigate 9/11."
“The FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission in its Report at page 100 significantly notes that ‘The Review Commission found that the FBI, to its credit, still has the 9/11 attacks and any potential conspiracy surrounding them, under active investigation,’” the suit says.
The complaint additionally argues that “the FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission, and the FBI itself, failed to assess and report to Congress, as mandated, several other categories of significant 9/11-related evidence known to the FBI via reports in the press, via the web, and via public events and/or reflected in the FBI’s own records.”
The Lawyers’ Committee, a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization, says in the suit that it “believes that the family members of the victims of the tragic crimes of 9/11 have a compelling right to know the full truth of what happened to their loved ones on 9/11, and that Congress and the Department of Justice, in order to do their jobs, have a compelling need to know.”
AE echoes the Lawyers’ Committee’s sentiments by stating that the “investigation and education of the public as to the true reasons these [World Trade Center] buildings collapsed on 9/11 [is] an important organizational interest distinct from the general public interest in seeing government agencies comply with the law.”
The nonprofits are joined in the litigation by Robert McIlvaine. McIlvaine’s son, Bobby, was killed in the attacks on New York.
Mark G. Harrison, of Bloomington, Ind., and John M. Clifford with the law firm Clifford & Garde, LLP, of Washington, D.C., are representing the complainants.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Case No. 1-19-CV-0824