John Bolton: Passing '9/11 Bill' Would Be 'Folly' for US
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Tuesday, 19 Apr 2016 01:20 PM
Passing the "9/11 bill," which would remove nations' immunity privileges if they participate in terrorism attacks on U.S. soil, would be "folly," and could open the United States' government and private citizens up "to frivolous lawsuits all over the world," former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Tuesday.
"I know, of course, that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all tools and agents of the United States government, don't you?" Bolton said about the pending bipartisan legislation on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "So by removing sovereign immunity and allowing plaintiffs in foreign countries who would like to sue us because they don't like the color of our eyes puts America far more at risk from this kind of action than Saudi Arabia is."
Families of victims of the 9/11 attacks are pushing for the bill in hopes of being allowed to sue nations that could have been involved in the attacks. They are also demanding the release of 28 pages removed from a congressional report about the attack, as they say the pages hide the alleged involvement of highly placed Saudis in the incidents.
The bipartisan Senate bill establishes that a 1976 law giving foreign nations immunity from U.S. lawsuits should not apply in cases where nations have a role in terrorist attacks that kill Americans on U.S. soil.
The Obama administration has been lobbying against the bill, saying it could put Americans at legal risk overseas, and Bolton agrees.
"Look, if the Saudi government or any part of it participated in the 9/11 attack, that requires in my view some kind of a really harsh response by government of the United States, something that neither [Presidents] George W. Bush nor Barack Obama have done. The response to an act of war should be commensurate."
However, the response should not be "to launch a thousand ambulance-chasing lawyers to file lawsuits and God forbid, one of the worst outcomes gets federal judges involved in national security policy," said Bolton.
Meanwhile, Bolton said he agrees that the 28 pages from the report should be made public, "assuming there is nothing in there that reveals sources and methods of intelligence-gathering that could affect us," and even the Saudi government has been calling for the pages to be released for at least a decade.
"The notion that the Saudis had some role in the 9/11 attacks, now, if that's true, one would think that George W. Bush might have been interested in that fact," Bolton told the program. "Given that the Taliban government of Afghanistan had a role in those attacks and that the administration's response was to throw that regime out of office, if they really thought that Saudi Arabia had a role here, don't you think George W. Bush would have done something about it?"
Meanwhile, there is a "lot of speculation, a lot of gossip," said Bolton, and he has not seen the missing 28 pages.
"I don't know what's in them," he said. "I'm all in favor of letting them out in public but just say to me with a straight face, George W. Bush covered up for the Saudis? Just say it. Let's get that out there if that is what people really think. I think it is ridiculous."
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Poster Comment:
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all tools and agents of the United States government?
This is ridiculous. These CORPORATIONS are entities unto themselves and only owe allegiance to the U.S. Government for their corporate charters. Those charters are what binds them to obey ALL Federal, State and local laws. Those charters are what also allows those corporations to conduct business outside the U.S.
Besides, Bolton is a Neocon. What sinister reason would he have to defend the Saudis?