Dem: FBI strong-armed former senator on 9/11 pages

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is criticizing the Obama administration as having tried to strong-arm a former senator who is pushing to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report dealing with Saudi Arabia.

He recounted how Rep. Gwen Graham (D-Fla.) and her father, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.), were detained by the FBI in 2011 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The message from the agents, according to the Grahams, was to quit pushing for declassification of the 28 pages.

{mosads}The FBI “took a former senator, a former governor, grabbed him in an airport, hustled him into a room with armed force to try to intimidate him into taking different positions on issues of public policy and important national policy, and the fact that he wasn’t intimidated because he was calm doesn’t show that they weren’t trying to intimidate him,” Sherman said in an interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper.

Tampa Bay Times senior correspondent Lucy Morgan detailed the incident in a column on Aug. 7, 2015.

The Obama administration is now reviewing the secret 28 pages for possible release. Some former officials have said the pages show officials in Saudi Arabia were complicit in 9/11, which the country strongly denies. The Saudi government has pushed for the pages to be released.

Watch the video above to hear Sherman discuss the matter and his take on U.S.-Saudi relationship.