THIS STUFF JUST KEEPS COMING:

WASHINGTON – The congressional staff investigating the Sept. 11 attacks found information in the files of the CIA and FBI “suggesting specific sources of foreign support” for some of the 19 hijackers – information that the agencies were not pursuing, staff director Eleanor Hill said Friday.

The staff’s massive report, released Thursday, reveals that even FBI Director Robert Mueller in October was unaware of cables and reports that the joint inquiry staff found in FBI files indicating that some hijackers received money from people associated with the government of Saudi Arabia. . . .

Almost all the information about a possible Saudi connection was classified at the insistence of the Bush administration and not made public.

I agree with Steven Den Beste that the Bush Administration’s continuing solicitude for the Saudis is, to put it mildly, troubling. As I said back in December, I’m surprised that the Democrats haven’t made more out of this.

UPDATE: Bush is getting hit from the right on this, anyway, as Rich Lowry notes:

Saddam Hussein never got it. He didn’t realize that personal schmoozing in Washington and spreading lots of money around to former and soon-to-be U.S. government officials were the keys to realizing his geopolitical ambitions. He, in short, never learned the Saudi lesson.

How else to explain the differing treatments of the Iraqi and Saudi governments?

The Bush administration included a line in this year’s State of the Union address about Saddam’s alleged efforts to acquire uranium in Africa that was defensible, but hardly bulletproof — prompting an (overblown) national scandal. Now the administration is withholding from a congressional report sections dealing with Saudi support and financing for terrorism — which should prompt a (long-overdue) national scandal. . . .

The only apparent reason to keep the Saudi section under wraps is that it will embarrass Riyadh. If so, President Bush should have, at the outset, announced an important codicil to the Bush Doctrine that foreign governments have to choose between supporting us or supporting the terrorists — unless it discomfits the Saudi royal family.

Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Howard Owens thinks he knows why the Dems aren’t making more out of this.