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 The leaders of the independent commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks, former Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey and former Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, carried out that highly sensitive task with integrity and rigor. 
 
 Now they are weighing in again as the Obama administration prepares to make public at least some of the 28 pages from a separate, earlier investigation by a congressional panel that examined possible Saudi government involvement in the attacks. The pages have been kept secret since 2002. 
 
 In a statement issued last Friday, Mr. Kean, the commission chairman, and Mr. Hamilton, the vice chairman, effectively delivered this bottom line to Americans: Be cautious in judging the material when it becomes available. 
 
 Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a co-chairman of the separate 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, has long claimed there is evidence of complicity by institutions and people in Saudi Arabia beyond the 15 Saudi nationals who were among the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists. Such allegations are adding new tensions to an already fraught Saudi-American relationship. 
 
 But Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kean stress that, unlike their commission, the congressional panel never had a chance to investigate any of the leads contained in the 28 pages. Those pages were based mostly on raw, unvetted material from the F.B.I. and “therefore, are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules. Those rules exist to avoid implicating people in serious crimes without the benefit of follow-up investigation to determine if such suspicions are substantiated,” they wrote. 
 
 The two men said they consider this point crucial since the attacks were the worst mass murder ever in the United States. “Those responsible deserve the maximum punishment possible. Therefore, accusations of complicity in that mass murder from responsible authorities are a grave matter. Such charges should be levied with care,” they added. 
 
 Their comments do not appear to be an attempt to whitewash any Saudi role. The 9/11 report was critical of Saudi Arabia: It cited the government’s funding of schools and mosques that fanned an extreme form of Islam known as Wahhabism, as well as contributions by some wealthy Saudis to Islamic charities with links to terrorism. 
 
 During its tenure, the commission investigated all leads in the 28 pages and only one Saudi government employee was implicated in the plot, Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said. He was Fahad al Thumairy, who worked as an imam at a mosque in Los Angeles and was employed by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The commission found no evidence that Mr. Thumairy, who returned to Saudi Arabia in 2003, assisted two of the hijackers when they came to Los Angeles in 2000 but “he is still a person of interest,” they wrote. 
 
 When it wrapped up its investigation in 2004, the commission concluded that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al Qaeda. In 2015, another independent panel created by Congress, the 9/11 Review Commission, found no new evidence against the Saudi government. 
 
 The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said on Monday that it was realistic to expect the administration to release at least some of the 28 classified pages by June. Whatever emerges must be weighed in the context of the work already done by Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton and their team. ||||| FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2012, file photo Bob Graham speaks in Gainesville, Fla.. The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2012, file photo Bob Graham speaks in Gainesville, Fla.. The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. 
 
 The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." 
 
 Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. 
 
 "I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" 
 
 Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report." 
 
 "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with — all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. 
 
 Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner." 
 
 The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Still, protecting U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. 
 
 Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said Obama asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper to review the papers for possible declassification. 
 
 "When that's done we'd expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information," Rhodes told reporters in Riyadh last week, where Obama met with King Salman and other Saudi leaders. The White House says the 28 pages did not come up during discussions. 
 
 Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. But Graham, the relatives of victims and some lawmakers think there is reason to further probe possible Saudi links. 
 
 Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Al Thumairy was later denied entry into the United States in May 2003 after the State Department alleged that he might be involved in terrorist activity. Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. 
 
 "We did not discover ... Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks," Roemer said. But he added: "We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for al-Qaida. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That's why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this." 
 
 An Internet site pushing to get the documents released, 28pages.org, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. 
 
 That 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. One name is suspected al-Qaida operative Ghassan al Sharbi. 
 
 Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaida trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by U.S. interrogators. 
 
 The document said that after al Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered some documents buried nearby. One was al Sharbi's pilot certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, although it's unclear whether the license had been mailed by the embassy or if the envelope was simply being reused. 
 
 A CIA inspector-general report in June 2015 said there had been no reliable information confirming Saudi government "involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11." But it said also that people in the CIA's Near East Division and Counterterrorism Center "speculated that dissident sympathizers within the government may have aided al-Qaida." The rest of the chapter, titled "Issues Related to Saudi Arabia," is blacked out. 
 
 A bill directing the president to release the 28-page chapter was introduced in the Senate, and nearly three dozen Republicans and Democrats in the House are backing a similar resolution. 
 
 Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Obama last week saying they don't think releasing the chapter will harm national security and could provide closure for the victims' families. 
 
 California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the pages and said this past week that while he wants to see them declassified to end speculation about what they say, releasing them will not quell the debate over the issue. 
 
 "As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty," he said.
– A member of the official commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks is ratcheting up pressure on the White House to make public 28 pages of a congressional report dealing with suspected Saudi involvement. In an interview with the Guardian, former Navy secretary John Lehman lays it out in blunt terms: “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he says. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.” Lehman adds that he's not implicating members of the Saudi royal family or top civilian officials, but rather lower-echelon employees, perhaps in the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs. Last month, the leaders of the commission—former GOP Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana—cautioned against releasing the 28 pages and noted that just one Saudi official had been implicated in the plot. (That was diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, who was deported and remains a "person of interest," notes the New York Times.) But Lehman says he knows of at least five other Saudi employees who were under suspicion. “They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated,” he says. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”