Thread: US government releases secret chapter from 9/11 report

The 28 Pages that Damn Saudi Arabia

by A.J. Caschetta July 19, 2016 at 5:00 am

• More puzzling than the elusive pages from the Congressional 9/11 inquiry is why Obama released them, and specifically, why now.

• The president apparently believes it will burnish his legacy, embarrass his enemies and make permanent his diplomatic "accomplishments" with Iran. Reminding Americans of Saudi Arabia's Al-Qaeda connections, shortly after the one-year mark of the Iran nuclear deal and before the 15-year mark of 9/11, might also continue to desensitize us to the dangers posed by Iran.

• Americans suddenly flush with a renewed indignation against the Saudis might not run into the arms of the Iranian mullahs, but some might get distracted from their equally-deserved indignation about Iran's ongoing missile tests, the steady progress Iranian scientists are making at the nuclear plant in Parchin, and their anger at having been lied to again and again.

After keeping them secret for 14 years, the White House has finally released the 28 pages that were removed from the 2002 Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks and withheld from the final 9/11 Commission Report. More puzzling than the elusive pages is why Obama released them, and specifically, why now.

The administration claims that the 28 pages clear the Saudis because they provide no conclusive evidence of their involvement in 9/11. The media echo chamber followed the administration's lead: Time, Al Arabiya, NBC, the Associated Press and many others reported that the pages contained "no smoking guns." But there are smoking guns. Those smoking guns expose the Saudi government as a sponsor of terrorism, and, by proxy, improve Iran's standing in the Middle East.

Author Paul Sperry writes that the 28 pages "show the hijackers got help from Saudi diplomats and spies." And while the evidence might not meet the threshold that the current Department of Justice requires for an indictment, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) described it as

"a chilling description of Saudi ties to terrorists, Saudi payments to terrorists, and Saudi obstruction of U.S. antiterrorism investigations" and found "more than enough evidence to raise serious concerns."

Obama had to know, despite his administration's tepid affirmation of Saudi innocence, that the information in the 28 pages would inspire a wave of negativity towards Saudi Arabia from the American public. He also knows that anything that hurts Saudi Arabia's reputation helps Iran. What weakens Saudi Arabia tips the scales in Iran's favor, as the two nations compete for dominance in the region.

The evidence of the Saudi government's connections to the 15 Saudi jihadists who were involved in the 9/11 attacks has long been among the worst-kept secrets in Washington. Even so, few suspected that the 28 pages would reveal an intricate web of Saudi nationals radiating outwards from Prince Bandar himself, supplying assistance to Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two members of the "muscle" crew on American Airlines Flight #77 which Hani Hanjour flew into the Pentagon. Bandar, nephew to the former and current King, was Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005.

The White House has finally released the 28 pages that were removed from the 2002 Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. They reveal an intricate web of Saudi nationals radiating outwards from Prince Bandar (right), supplying assistance to Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two of the 9/11 terrorists.

The web includes Saudi consular officials, naval officers, pilots, and servants. At least three Saudi intelligence officers functioned as facilitators and go-betweens for several of the 9/11 jihadists. One of them, Osama Bassman, and his wife received monthly checks from Princess Haifa Bint Sultan -- not just any princess, but the wife of Bandar.

Meanwhile, Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers, a variety of Saudi owned front companies, and even the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., (where Osama bin Laden's brother Abdullah worked) provided all the cover a spy could ask for.

Mark Mazetti of The New York Times downplayed the damning evidence as a "wide-ranging catalog of meetings and suspicious coincidences." Coincidences indeed -- when Abu Zubayda, Al-Qaeda's financier, was captured in 2002 after a shoot-out in Faisalabad, Pakistan, he had on his person the phone number of Prince Bandar's bodyguard. What are the odds?

Former US Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida) and others in Congress have spent years calling for the 28 pages to be released, but that does not mean that the pages had to be released -- the administration continues to withhold a great deal of information requested by Congress (IRS files, Fast and Furious documents). President Obama could have prevented this release for the duration of his tenure, but he did not. So how does releasing evidence that the Saudi government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks advance his goals?

It is possible that Obama believes the information should be released in the interests of truth and transparency, but this is unlikely given his history and the fact that he has had over seven years to follow that course of action.

Under a different administration, releasing the 28 pages might be an opportunity to manipulate Saudi policy, or a ploy to pit the Saudis and Iranians against each other. Obama, however, has never done much to hide his favoritism for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Islamic Republic over the House of Saud.

A more realistic explanation for the sudden release of the 28 pages is that the president apparently believes it will burnish his legacy, embarrass his enemies and make permanent his diplomatic "accomplishments" with Iran. Reminding Americans of Saudi Arabia's Al-Qaeda connections, shortly after the 1-year mark of the JCPOA and before the 15-year mark of 9/11, might also continue to desensitize us to the dangers posed by Iran. This seems to be a top priority for the President in his second term.

The JCPOA legitimized the Iranian nuclear program and ensured that a Saudi nuclear program would follow. But revealing to the American public proof of the House of Saud's involvement with Al-Qaeda is a poison pill that will make it difficult to continue treating Saudi Arabia as an ally. It is hard to imagine how relations with the Kingdom could ever be the same. Perhaps there was an element of revenge involved for Bandar's opposition to the JCPOA.

Americans suddenly flush with a renewed indignation against the Saudis might not run into the arms of the Iranian mullahs, but some might get distracted from their equally-deserved indignation about Iran's ongoing missile tests, the steady progress Iranian scientists are making at the nuclear plant in Parchin, and their anger at having been lied to again and again.

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A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

It Is A Smoking Gun - Prince Bandar And Other Saudis Financed The 9/11 Terrorists


by Tyler Durden
Jul 18, 2016 8:05 PM

News reports about the recently released 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks are typically dismissive: this is nothing new, it’s just circumstantial evidence, and there’s no “smoking gun.” Yet given what the report actually says – and these news accounts are remarkably sparse when it comes to verbatim quotes – it’s hard to fathom what would constitute a smoking gun.

To begin with, let’s start with what’s not in these pages: there are numerous redactions. And they are rather odd. When one expects to read the words “CIA” or “FBI,” instead we get a blacked-out word. Entire paragraphs are redacted – often at crucial points. So it’s reasonable to assume that, if there is a smoking gun, it’s contained in the portions we’re not allowed to see. Presumably the members of Congress with access to the document prior to its release who have been telling us that it changes their entire conception of the 9/11 attacks – and our relationship with the Saudis – read the unredacted version. Which points to the conclusion that the omissions left out crucial information – perhaps including the vaunted smoking gun.
In any case, what we have access to makes more than just a substantial case: it shows that the Saudi government – including top officials, such as then Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and other members of the royal family – financed and actively aided the hijackers prior to September 11, 2001.

Support for at least two of the hijackers when they arrived in the US was extended by three key individuals:

• Omar al-Bayoumi – Bayoumi was clearly a Saudi intelligence agent: the FBI all but identifies him as such. His salary was paid for by companies directly owned and operated by the Saudi government, although he apparently rarely showed up for “work.” He was directly subsidized by the wife of then Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, and these subsidies were substantially increased when the hijackers arrived in the US. It was Bayoumi who hovered over two of the hijackers – Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar – as soon as they arrived in the United States. He got them an apartment, co-signed the rental agreement, chauffeured them around – and helped them obtain information on flight schools.
• Osama Bassnan – This individual, who, according to the report, has “many ties to the Saudi government,” boasted to an informant that he did more for the two hijackers than Bayoumi. He was certainly in a position to do so, since he lived directly across the street from them in San Diego. The FBI characterized him as “an extremist and supporter of Osama bin Laden”: like Bayoumi, his longtime associate – with whom he was in constant communication at the time of the hijackers’ American sojourn – Bassnan was subsidized by the Saudi royal family, and specifically Prince Bandar and his wife. A search of Basnan’s apartment turned up indications that he had cashiers checks amounting to $74,000. Bandar’s wife’s account had a standing arrangement to send monthly checks to Basan’s wife for “nursing services.” There is no evidence that such services were ever performed. The suppressed 28 pages cite direct payments from Prince Bandar to Basnan:
  “On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account. Accordion to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar She also received one additional check froth Bandar’s wife, which she cashed on January 8, 1998 for 10,000.”
• Shayk Fahah al-Thumairy – He was a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and imam of the King Fahad mosque, which is a focal point of Muslim-Saudi activity in the area. US intelligence avers that “initial indications are that al-Thumairy may have had a physical or financial connection to al-Hamzi and al-Midhar.” Both attended the King Fahad mosque. Thumairy was interviewed by US law enforcement after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, and denied having any contact with the two hijackers – in spite of evidence that he was in telephonic contact with them. This, he asserted, was an attempt to “smear” him.

The two hijackers had extensive contacts with Saudi naval officers in the United States, according to telephone records. And when Abu Zubaydah, one of the accused 9/11 conspirators, was captured in Pakistan, they found the phone number of a Colorado company that managed “the affairs of the Colorado residence of the Saudi Ambassador.” Prince Bandar is practically the star of the suppressed 28 pages – no wonder the Bush administration, which had close ties to him, fought so hard to keep this secret.

The 28 pages also reveal that an individual – name redacted – associated with al-Qaeda and the hijackers sneaked into the US, avoiding Customs agents and the INS due to the fact that he was traveling with a member of the Saudi royal family. We are also told that “Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, [redacted], is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.”

The Saudi government’s financial and operational ties to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers are myriad, and largely substantiated. Furthermore, although some of these links as detailed in the 28 pages are tentative, it’s important to remember that this report was written in 2002, and that the intelligence community was strongly admonished to follow up because lawmakers deemed the lack of investigation into the Saudi connection “unacceptable.” So what did they find out in the fourteen years after that admonition was delivered? Inquiring minds want to know….

Prince Bandar went on to become head of Saudi intelligence: his personal relationship with the Bush family is well-known, and his access to US government officials – and his powerful influence in Washington – makes his starring role in the nurturing of the two hijackers into a gun that, while not quite smoking, is exuding vapors of a highly suggestive nature.

“Circumstantial evidence”? Perhaps – but people have been convicted of murder on the basis of such evidence, and, in this case, there is such a preponderance of evidence that a guilty verdict is unavoidable.

It would not be stretching the evidence to bluntly state that the suppressed 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks places agents of the Saudi government at the epicenter of the plot. In short, there’s no two ways about it: the Saudis did 9/11.

Why did our government cover up this shocking evidence for so long?
The reason is because they had no desire to retaliate against the real perpetrators of 9/11. Instead, as we now know, they were determined to pin the blame on Saddam Hussein: indeed, the Bush administration pressed this talking point relentlessly, until it was forced to backtrack. We attacked Iraq, in the words of neocon grise eminence and top Bush administration official Paul Wolfowitz, because it was “doable.” A years long neoconservative campaign to target Iraq gained new impetus in the wake of 9/11, and the administration and its journalistic camarilla pushed the lie that Iraq was behind the attack. The evidence that the Saudis were involved had to be suppressed – because the Bush administration’s war plans depended on it.

Now that we know the truth, what do we do about it?
To begin with, if any other government had connections to a terrorist attack on the US of this nature, their capital would’ve been a smoking ruin. I’m not suggesting we do that, but at the very least the Saudis must be made to pay a high price for their complicity, starting with a moratorium on all US aid and arms sales to the Kingdom. We imposed trade sanctions on Russia for far less. Cutting off the Saudis from the US banking system should put a crimp in their extensive international network of terror-financing and money-laundering. And I know it’s too much to expect a public statement from our President pointing out that a US “ally” aided and abetted those who murdered over 3,000 people on 9/11, but I can dream, can’t I?

The Saudis aren’t our allies: as the 28 pages make all too clear, they are our deadly enemies. And they ought to be treated as such.





http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-0...rists?AID=7236

What we know about Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11

By Simon Henderson 8:55 AM Tuesday Jul 19, 2016

Sometimes, reality is so absurd that it outstrips anything conspiracy theorists could come up with. More than 13 years after the Congressional investigation published its report into the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, the much-discussed "28 pages" on Saudi involvement in the terrorist assault, which had been held back as too sensitive to publish, have been released. It turns out, there are 29 pages, not 28, numbered 415 through 443 in the congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. And deletions on the pages - sometimes words, often whole lines - add up to the equivalent of a total of three pages. So we still are not being given the full story.

It is instantly apparent that the widely held belief for why the pages were not initially released - to prevent embarrassing the Saudi royal family - is true.

The pages are devastating:

Page 415: "While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support and assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government. . .at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers."

Page 417: One of the individuals identified in the pages as a financial supporter of two of the 9/11 hijackers, Osama Bassnan, later received a "significant amount of cash" from "a member of the Saudi Royal Family" during a 2002 trip to Houston.

Page 418: "Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, [deleted], is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations."

Pages 418 and 419: Detained al Qaeda leader Abu Zaybaida, had in his phone book the unlisted number for the security company that managed the Colorado residence of Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Page 421: "a [deleted], dated July 2, 2002 [indicates] 'incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists inside the Saudi Government.'"

Page 426: Bassnan's wife was receiving money "from Princess Haifa bint Sultan," the wife of the Saudi ambassador. (Her correct name is actually Princess Haifa bint Faisal.)

Page 436: Treasury General Counsel David Aufhauser testified that "offices of [the Saudi charity] al-Haramain have significant contacts with extremists, Islamic extremists." CIA officials also testified "that they were making progress on their investigations of al-Haramain. . .the head of the central office is complicit in supporting terrorism, and it also raised questions about [Saudi interior minister] Prince Nayef."

On reading this, I let out a shout: "Yes!"

On Jan. 9, 2002, U.S. News & World Report quoted two unidentified Clinton administration officials saying that two senior Saudi princes had been paying off Osama bin Laden since a 1995 bombing in Riyadh, which killed five American military advisers. I followed up in an August 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed, reporting that U.S. and British officials had told me the names of the two senior princes who were using Saudi official money - not their own - to pay off bin Laden to cause trouble elsewhere but not in the kingdom. I referred to the princes in a later Wall Street Journal op-ed: They were Prince Nayef, the father of the current Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, and his brother Prince Sultan, then defense minister and father of then Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Both Nayef and Sultan are now dead.

The U.S. News & World Report article quoted a Saudi official saying: "Where's the evidence? Nobody offers proof." That official was current Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who has no doubt spent recent days lobbying members of Congress doing advance damage control - my bet is he has probably been using the same lines.

But with the release of the 29 pages, and their detailed description of the financial connections between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi officials, Jubeir's argument has become increasingly difficult to make. The inquiry, after all, quotes a redacted source alleging "incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi Government."

Upon the pages' release, Washington-based <acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym></acronym> firm Qorvis, which has a lucrative contract with the kingdom, released its own analysis that began with a quote from an interview that CIA Director John Brennan gave to al-Arabiyya on June 11. It reads in part: "[T]here was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks."

That could very well be right. But it still allows for the possibility, indeed the probability, that the actions of senior Saudis resulted in those terrorist outrages. I have never suggested that the Saudi government or members of the royal family directly supported or financed the 9/11 attacks. But official Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the attackers, without a doubt. I once asked a British official: "How do we know?" He replied that we know what account the money came out of, and where it ended up.

On Friday, Foreign Minister al-Jubeir held a news conference at the Saudi embassy where he declared "The matter is now finished." Asked whether the report exonerated the kingdom, he replied: "Absolutely." I think not.

What we know about Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11

Clinton, Bush Implicated in Covering Up Saudi Terror in U.S.

The recently-declassified pages of the 9/11 report implicated both administrations, saying they ignored the Saudi network in the U.S.

BY RYAN MAURO Mon, July 18, 2016

Former presidents Bill Clinton (L) and George W. Bush. (Photo: Wikipedia)

The 28 pages of the recently-declassified report on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack not only implicated the Saudi government and its network on U.S. soil, it implicates the Clinton and Bush Administrations in covering up that network and stopping the FBI from protecting America from it.

Page 11 states:

“Prior to September 11^th, the FBI apparently did not focus investigative [censored]…Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.’…A representative of the FBI’s [censored] testified in closed hearings that, prior to September 11^th, the FBI received ‘no reporting from any member of the Intelligence Community’ that there is a [censored] presence in the United States.”

The censoring of the documents leaves us to wonder what specific terror-related presence the documents are referring to, but it is veryclear that it is a network linked to the Saudi government and insufficient investigative resources were allotted for it because of those linkages.

Repeat: A terrorist network threatening Americans was “apparently” not properly addressed because it wasn’t worth offending the government of Saudi Arabia, even though the documents say the Saudi government was, as one veteran FBI agent was quoted as saying, “useless and obstructionist” on counter-terrorism.

The scandalous revelations could impact the presidential campaign because the Clinton Administration had eight years to address this Saudi network in America.

The Bush Administration was in office for only 9 months, but cannot be absolved of blame. The files do not indicate that any change in direction was ordered before the attacks and it chose to classify the pages exposing the Saudis in the 2002 report.

The Bush Administration also opted not to blacklist two terror-tied organizations with strong Saudi ties: Muslim World League and International Islamic Relief Organization. The former also has strong links to Huma Abedin and her family, one of the closest advisers to Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps that decision has something to do with the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was so close to the Bush family that he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.”

It turns out “Bandar Bush” and his wife were up to their ears in terrorist activity. This includes the FBI finding copies of checks from February 1999 to May 2002 showing payments of $74,000 from his wife to the wife of one of the Saudi intelligence officers linked to the 9/11 hijackers for “nursing services.”

As you probably assumed, the FBI found no evidence that these services were actually rendered.

An unlisted phone number to the Colorado-based company that handled the affairs of “Bandar Bush” was found in the possession of Abu Zubaydah, one of the most senior Al-Qaeda leaders at the time. The documents contain much more than that to show that this “moderate” was intricately involved in the Saudi-backed jihadist network.

Documents obtained by the Clarion Project show that President Bush was actually scheduled to meet with representatives from the Saudi-linked Muslim Brotherhood network on the very day of the attacks, September 11, 2001. This was the fruition of the Republican Party and Bush presidential campaign’s embrace of Islamists, many of whom belonged to the Saudi-backed Brotherhood network.

The relationship continued after the 9/11 attacks, but frayed as some of those same Islamists faced investigations and prosecutions.

The Saudi regime is known as one of the most prolific influence-peddlers. Former CIA case officer Robert Baer, wrote in his book Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold its Soul for Saudi Crude:

“Saudi money also seeped into the bureaucracy. Any Washington bureaucrat with a room-temperature IQ knows that if he stays on the right side of the kingdom, one way or another, he’ll be able to finagle his way to feed at the Saudi trough. A consulting contract with Aramco, a chair at American University, a job with Lockheed—it doesn’t matter.

There’s hardly a living former assistant secretary of state for the Near East, CIA director, White House staffer, or member of Congress who hasn’t ended up on the Saudi payroll in one way or another, or so it sometimes seems. With this kind of money waiting out there, of course Washington’s bureaucrats don’t have the backbone to take on Saudi Arabia.”

A search of the Foreign Agents Registration Act website shows 14 active foreign agents of Saudi Arabia, including the Podesta Group. It is led by a major Democratic Party financier who is the brother of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager. The group is paid $140,00 per month by the Saudis.

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington repeatedly urged Americans to be on guard against this type of activity, saying “foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

The “spirit of party,” Washington warned, “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Every American should be reminded of his words in light of the newly-released documents.

Clinton, Bush Implicated in Covering Up Saudi Terror in U.S.