Thread: Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill

Originally Posted by joe s

It doesn't matter what you really want. Most Americans want cheap oil regardless of the political math. There is a price to pay for everything and if this part of the world isn't important to you, other countries like Russia and China will move closer every time we back away. The US economy does not and will not work without an endless supply of crude oil accompanied by prices at or below market value.

Buying crude doesn't require that we get involved with these countries. We just buy what's available on the market, doesn't matter where it comes from, Mexico, Canada, US, Iraq, Iran, Saudi, Libya, Syria, wherever.

Saudi officials were 'supporting' 9/11 hijackers, commission member says

First serious public split revealed among commissioners over the release of the secret ‘28 pages’ that detail Saudi ties to 2001 terrorist attacks

A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission, breaking dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.

The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.

“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” Lehman said in an interview, suggesting that the commission may have made a mistake by not stating that explicitly in its final report. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

He was critical of a statement released late last month by the former chairman and vice-chairman of the commission, who urged the Obama administration to be cautious about releasing the full congressional report on the Saudis and 9/11 – “the 28 pages”, as they are widely known in Washington – because they contained “raw, unvetted” material that might smear innocent people.

The 9/11 commission chairman, former Republican governor Tom Kean of New Jersey, and vice-chairman, former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, praised Saudi Arabia as, overall, “an ally of the United States in combatting terrorism” and said the commission’s investigation, which came after the congressional report was written, had identified only one Saudi government official – a former diplomat in the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles – as being “implicated in the 9/11 plot investigation”.

The diplomat, Fahad al-Thumairy, who was deported from the US but was never charged with a crime, was suspected of involvement in a support network for two Saudi hijackers who had lived in San Diego the year before the attacks.

In the interview Wednesday, Lehman said Kean and Hamilton’s statement that only one Saudi government employee was “implicated” in supporting the hijackers in California and elsewhere was “a game of semantics” and that the commission had been aware of at least five Saudi government officials who were strongly suspected of involvement in the terrorists’ support network.

“They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated,” he said. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”

Although Lehman said he did not believe that the Saudi royal family or the country’s senior civilian leadership had any role in supporting al-Qaida or the 9/11 plot, he recalled that a focus of the criminal investigation after 9/11 was upon employees of the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs, which had sponsored Thumairy for his job in Los Angeles and has long been suspected of ties to extremist groups.

He said “the 28 pages”, which were prepared by a special House-Senate committee investigating pre-9/11 intelligence failures, reviewed much of the same material and ought to be made public as soon as possible, although possibly with redactions to remove the names of a few Saudi suspects who were later cleared of any involvement in the terrorist attacks.

Lehman has support among some of the other commissioners, although none have spoken out so bluntly in criticizing the Saudis. A Democratic commissioner, former congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana, said he wants the congressional report released to end some of the wild speculation about what is in the 28 pages and to see if parts of the inquiry should be reopened. When it comes to the Saudis, he said, “we still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what happened on 9/11”.

Another panel member, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of offending the other nine, said the 28 pages should be released even though they could damage the commission’s legacy – “fairly or unfairly” – by suggesting lines of investigation involving the

Saudi government that were pursued by Congress but never adequately explored by the commission.

“I think we were tough on the Saudis, but obviously not tough enough,” the commissioner said. “I know some members of the staff felt we went much too easy on the Saudis. I didn’t really know the extent of it until after the report came out.”

The commissioner said the renewed public debate could force a spotlight on a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials – especially at lower levels of the government – were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.

In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis, between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive director, University of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of state,

Condoleezza Rice, after leaving the commission. The staff included experienced investigators from the FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA, as well as the congressional staffer who was the principal author of the 28 pages.

Zelikow fired a staffer, who had repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being edited out of the report or was being pushed to tiny, barely readable footnotes and endnotes. The staff protests were mostly overruled.

The 9/11 commission did criticize Saudi Arabia for its sponsorship of a fundamentalist branch of Islam embraced by terrorists and for the Saudi royal family’s relationship with charity groups that bankrolled al-Qaida before 9/11.

However, the commission’s final report was still widely read as an exoneration, with a central finding by the commission that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually” provided financial assistance to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. The statement was hailed by the Saudi government as effectively clearing Saudi officials of any tie to 9/11.

Last month Barack Obama, returning from a tense state visit to Saudi Arabia, disclosed the administration was nearing a decision on whether to declassify some or all of the 28 pages, which have been held under lock and key in a secure room beneath the Capitol since they were written in 2002. Just days after the president’s comments however, his CIA director, John Brennan, announced that he opposed the release of the congressional report, saying it contained inaccurate material that might lead to unfair allegations that Saudi Arabia was tied to 9/11.

In their joint statement last month, Kean and Hamilton suggested they agreed with Brennan and that there might be danger in releasing the full 28 pages.

The congressional report was “based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI”, they said. “The 28 pages, therefore, are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules.” If any part of the congressional report is made public, they said, it should be redacted “to protect the identities of anyone who has been ruled out by authorities as having any connection to the 9/11 plot”.

Zelikow, the commission’s executive director, told NBC News last month that the 28 pages “provide no further answers about the 9/11 attacks that are not already included in the 9/11 commission report”. Making them public “will only make the red herring glow redder”.

But Kean, Hamilton and Zelikow clearly do not speak for a number of the other commissioners, who have repeatedly suggested they are uncomfortable with the perception that the commission exonerated Saudi Arabia and who have joined in calling for public release of the 28 pages.

Lehman and another commissioner, former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, filed affidavits last year in support of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government by the families of 9/11 victims. “Significant questions remain unanswered concerning possible involvement of Saudi government institutions and actors,” Kerrey said. Lehman agreed: “Contrary to the argument advocated by the Kingdom, the 9/11 commission did not exonerate Saudi Arabia of culpability for the events of 11 September 2001 or the financing of al-Qaida.” He said he was “deeply troubled” by the evidence gathered about a hijackers’ support network in California.

In an interview last week, congressman Roemer, the Democratic commissioner, suggested a compromise in releasing the 28 pages. He said that, unlike Kean and Hamilton, he was eager to see the full congressional report declassified and made public, although the 28 pages should be released alongside a list of pertinent excerpts of the 9/11 commission’s final report. “That would show what allegations were and were not proven, so that innocent people are not unfairly maligned,” he said. “It would also show there are issues raised in the 28 pages about the Saudis that are still unresolved to this day.”

Saudi officials were 'supporting' 9/11 hijackers, commission member says

Philip Shenon is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation

‘Prior to 9/11 terrorist attacks, CIA never trained in torture methods’

Published time: 14 May, 2016 12:15

In the aftermath of 9/11 that led to these extreme measures, ignorant people who were not professional intelligence officers were allowed to make these decisions, Larry Johnson, retired CIA and State Department official, told RT.

A US federal appeals court Friday rejected efforts to fully disclose a CIA torture report compiled by the Senate in 2014. It contains findings that CIA officers interrogated detainees using enhanced torture techniques. Only a fraction of the cases have been made public.

RT: Why has the appeals court rejected efforts to disclose the CIA torture report?

Larry Johnson: I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know what their legal rationale is. I simply note that it is important to disclose this information just from the standpoint of trying to reestablish some measure of honor in an intelligence service that has been severely tarnished by these past actions.

RT: What is the logic though? If what you say is true, presumably they are aware that could damage the reputation of the CIA a bit further. So why they would say they don’t want to disclose this further?

LJ: Well, it can very well implicate higher-ups and show that clearly this activity was carried out with the knowledge, permission, and at the direction up to including President George W. Bush. So it is an effort perhaps to try to shield them from further potential litigation on the international front such as in the international court in The Hague. The case could be made that they are protecting sources and methods. But in reality it’s a poor excuse. It is a shameful period, I think it should be disclosed, but certainly my voice is not the determining factor in this.

RT: What sort of pressure, do you think, could be put on the court or the judicial system?

LJ: Here is sort of the irony. I mean it has been labeled ‘CIA torture technics’, but the reality was, prior to 9/11, while there had been some abuses in the past, the CIA, and particularly operations officers, they were never trained in interrogation methods; they were never trained in torture. Why?

Russian intelligence officers know this as well as we do, and even the former KGB: you don’t get your best recruits through coercion, through pressure, through pain. You get your best recruits by getting people who like you; that you have developed a relationship with; which you’ve developed rapport with. So what happened in the aftermath of 9/11 that led to these extreme measures, was really an example where ignorant people who were not professional intelligence officers were allowed to make these decisions. And unfortunately, there were some professional intelligence officers that acquiesced. Several should have properly stood up, threatened to quit and to go public. Unfortunately they did not – they went along with it. But you had political hacks, who allowed this nonsense to come into the intelligence service, and in the process it creates this entire stain upon what the intelligence service was supposed to be.


‘Prior to 9/11 terrorist attacks, CIA never trained in torture methods’

Donald Trump warns of another 9/11-style attack by refugees using ISIS-funded phones

The presumptive Republican nominee appeared on a US Border Patrol radio show

Feliks Garcia New York 20 hours ago

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trumped warned of an 11 September-level attack led by refugees who enter the US with mobile phones funded by the so-called Islamic State.

In an interview with the National Border Patrol Council’s Green Line radio programme, Mr Trump answered whether or not he believed it would take a large-scale attack on US soil for Americans to “wake up” about border security.

“I do, I actually do,” he said. ““Bad things will happen - a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now that are coming into our country, because, I have no doubt in my mind.”

Mr Trump added that refugees are entering the US with mobile phones that brandish the ISIS flag, adding that the militant Islamist organisation is funding their phone bills.

“I mean you look at it, they have cell phones,” he added. “So they don’t have money, they don’t have anything. They have cell phones. Who pays their monthly charges, right? They have cell phones with the flags, the ISIS flags on them. And then we’re supposed to say, ‘Isn’t this wonderful that we’re taking them in?’”

Mr Trump suggested that immigration policies of his Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would lead to such dangers.

“[Clinton] wants the Syrians to pour into the country - we don’t know if they’re Syrians, by the way,” he said. “We have no idea who they are because much of it is undocumented. A lot of these people don’t have any documents. Wait until you see the problems we’ll have with that.”

Mr Trump did not cite any specific intelligence he had received that would suggest such an attack is imminent.

Once the New York real estate tycoon is formally nominated to be the Republican candidate, then he will receive an intelligence briefing from the Director of National Intelligence - a tradition undergone with candidates in both parties. But his numerous assertions about US national security without formal intelligence briefing indicate the candidate plays by a different set of rules - even in matters of trade.

With regards to the EU referendum, Mr Trump told Piers Morgan in an ITV interview to be aired Monday, that the UK would not fall to the back of a queue when trading with the US, the Guardian reports.

“I mean, I’m going to treat everybody fairly but it wouldn’t make any difference to me whether they were in the EU or not," he said. "You’d certainly not be at the back of the queue, that I can tell you.”

President Barack Obama recently warned that the first priority of the US would to be to negotiate trade deals with the EU - and it could take up to a decade to work out a new arrangement with the UK.

“It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we’re actually able to get something done,” he said.

Donald Trump warns 9/11-style attack by refugees using ISIS phones

5/17/16

Senate OKs bill letting families of 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia, despite threats

Saudi Daily:

‘Satanic’ Bill Allowing Kingdom to be Sued For 9/11 Will ‘Open Gates Of Hell’ For The U.S.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

by Deborah Danan22 May 2016

TEL AVIV – The Saudi press slammed the U.S. for its “despicable” double standard in regard to a proposed bill that would allow victims of the September 11 attacks to sue the kingdom, claiming that the move would “open the gates of hell,” enabling all countries that have been wronged by the U.S. to sue it for war crimes.

The popular Saudi daily Okaz ran a scathing article translated by MEMRI, entitled, “Congress’s Satanic Deed Opens the Gates of Hell for the World’s Largest Country,” accompanied by an image of President Obama with a Star of David and the emblem of the Iranian regime on his forehead.

Proclaiming that the bill proves that there “is no justice or morality in American politics,” the article accuses the U.S. of bypassing international law, which stipulates that countries are immune from legal proceedings in other states.The U.S. Senate exhibited the most despicable kind of double standard, defied the [whole] world, and showed contempt for international law when it passed a bill allowing families of the September 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. This bill will change the international law regarding sovereign immunity, which has long been implemented.

The Senate failed to understand that, by adopting this bill, it will open many doors for harming the U.S. [itself], because this bill will enable countries that have been harmed by the U.S. to sue it for war crimes.

The article continues by predicting that the Senate will come to regret its decision because of the economic damage to the U.S. should the bill be approved. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, to whom the article refers as “the most influential Republican politician in the U.S.,” understands this and tried to warn Senate members not to “make mistakes” with Saudi Arabia. However, “racist” and “hostile” Vice President Joe Biden ignored Ryan’s warnings and incited the Senate to pass the bill.

The Okaz editorial points out that Biden, whose rhetoric is xenophobic and hostile toward Muslims, was behind the proposal to divide Iraq into three sectarian mini-states.The double standard in the U.S. policy has become clear, considering that it ignores Iran and Hezbollah, who, in documents of the U.S. Prosecutor, were convicted of perpetrating the September 11 [attacks] along with Al-Qaeda, and at the same time it levels accusations against a country that has suffered and is still suffering from terror [Saudi Arabia], and which spends large sums to defend the region from its dangers.

Another article published the same day in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah echoed Okaz‘s warning that “stripping countries of their [sovereign] immunity and allowing them to be sued will open the gates of hell for the Americans themselves.”

Saudi columnist Fadhel Bin Sa’d Al-Bu’aynin further warned that the bill would become a “hangman’s noose that will tighten around the neck” of the U.S.

Al-Bu’aynin continues by claiming that the bill will cause all the U.S.’s past interference in Middle Eastern affairs – “state terror … destroying countries and peoples … and stealing their resources” – to come back to haunt it.

“One day, this law will be used to sue all those who who caused the destruction of Iraq, Syria, and Libya and spread terror organizations in them, and everyone who planned to destroy Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. The monster will rise up against its creator,” the article reads.

http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2...-hell-for-u-s/

Last-Minute Change to Bill Dashes Hopes of Suing Saudi Arabia

A coalition of 9/11 families have been fighting for the right to sue Saudi Arabia for its role in the attacks. A bill allowing them to do so has just been crippled.

BY ELLIOT FRIEDLAND Thu, May 26, 2016



Senator Charles Schumer.



U.S. Senator Charles Schumer added a last minute amendment to a bill allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, as reported by the New York Post. The addition would allow the Justice Department to delay any legal action against foreign governments indefinitely.

The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate and is awaiting a vote in the House. The change effectively renders the bill powerless.

The section added by Schumer to the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act is titled "Stay of Actions Pending State Negotiations." It allows the secretary of state to suspend litigation proceedings as long as they can "certify" that the U.S. government is "engaged in good-faith discussions with the foreign-state defendant concerning the resolution of claims against the foreign state."

The attorney-general would also be able to petition the court to add additional 180 day stays which could be repeated indefinitely.

Even Iran's PressTV was outraged by the last minute addition.

The full text of the bill is available here.

By editing the bill in this way Schumer has ensured that even if the bill passes the state will be able to block legal action, effectively denying 9/11 families the right to justice.

Last-Minute Change to Bill Dashes Hopes of Suing Saudi Arabia

What are They Hiding? Govt Wants to Keep 9/11 Cockpit Audio Secret During Gitmo Trial

Matt Agorist June 2, 2016 57 Comments

So far, 2016 is proving to be the year the September 11th attacks have been blown wide open. But when the U.S. Government is involved, it’s one step forward, then two steps back.

For the first time since that fateful September day, a once oblivious populace has begun to question why the US invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Then, in an April episode of 60-Minutes, former Florida governor, Democratic U.S. Senator and onetime chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bob Graham implicated a US ally for their role in the September 11th attacks.

“I think it’s implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” said Graham in the interview, implicating Saudi Arabia for their role in 9/11.

Graham mentioned that a redacted portion of the 9/11 investigation, now popularly known as the 28 pages, implicates the Saudi Kingdom in aiding the attackers.
Just when it seemed that Americans were finally going to get a glimpse into the facts of what really happened on 9/11, Saudi Arabia threatened the US with the collapse of the dollar if they released the 28-pages.

Predictably, Obama caved to the Saudis.

Ah, but there was another glimmer of hope after the U.S. Senate’s unanimous passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which allowed the families of victims of 9/11 to sue the Saudi government in federal court.

Last week, after the victim’s families had their hopes built up by the passage of JASTA, it was revealed that the bill’s co-sponsor Chuck Schumer slipped in a last minute loophole, effectively castrating the entire bill.

While JASTA would allow for families of victims of 9/11 to overcome the current restrictions, the new section of the bill would essentially allow the heads of the Justice and State departments to stay any lawsuits indefinitely. The provision allows for the organizational heads to simply “inform the judge hearing the case that the US government has engaged with Riyadh in diplomatic talks to resolve the issue” — indefinitely.

As if rendering JASTA irrelevant wasn’t enough, this week, a U.S. government prosecutor, Ed Ryan announced that a military court is being asked to withhold from the public a cockpit recording from a hijacked jet in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, because it contains evidence needed for upcoming trials. Joanne Stocker, reporting for Sputnik News in Guantanamo Bay explains:

“[The voice recording] has significant events for the purposes of the government’s case-in-chief,” Ryan told Judge James Pohl. “It proves hijacking in the first place. It proves intent. It proves the initial murders of the crew in the cockpit — the sounds of which can be heard — and, at the end, it contains the attempts to retake the airliner.”

The recording is from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before reaching its intended target. Flight 93’s recording is unique as it is the only one which survived the September 11 attacks.

The recording allegedly captured passengers taking back over the plane from the hijackers before the plane crashed.
According to Sputnik, Ryan stated that the prosecution plans to play the audio at upcoming trials of suspects detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

He explained that the protective order must be in place before the US government can turn the audio over to lawyers who are defending terrorist suspects, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Keeping the recording a secret is a kick in the teeth for the families who lost their loved ones on that day, especially the ones on Flight 93. It is also entirely unnecessary. The ones who are allegedly on trial are in Gitmo, and American citizens listening to that audio would have zero impact on the outcome of these hearings.

The court’s keeping this audio secret is just another reason American citizens, and the victim’s families in particular, have no reason to trust their government any longer.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/hid...5QL1bsmRw7B.99

U.N. Chief Admits He Removed Saudi Arabia From Child-Killer List Due to Extortion

Alex Emmons Zaid Milani June 9 2016, 7:36 p.m.

U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL Ban Ki-moon publicly acknowledged Thursday that he removed the Saudi-led coalition currently bombing Yemen from a blacklist of child killers — 72 hours after it was published — due to a financial threat to defund United Nations programs.

The secretary-general didn’t name the source of the threat, but news reportshave indicated it came directly from the Saudi government.

The U.N.’s 2015 “Children and Armed Conflict” report originally listed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen under “parties that kill or maim children” and “parties that engage in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.” The report, which was based on the work of U.N. researchers in Yemen, attributed 60 percent of the 785 children killed and 1,168 injured to the bombing coalition.

After loud public objections from the Saudi government, Ban said on Monday that he was revising the report to “review jointly the cases and numbers cited in the text,” in order to “reflect the highest standards of accuracy possible.”

But on Thursday, he described his real motivation. “The report describes horrors no child should have to face,” Ban said at a press conference. “At the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many U.N. programs. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and so many other places would fall further into despair.”

Saudi Arabia is one of the U.N.’s largest donors in the Middle East, giving hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.N. food programs in Syria and Iraq. In 2014, Saudi Arabia gave $500 million — the largest single humanitarian donation to the U.N. — to help Iraqis displaced by ISIS. Over the past three years, Saudi Arabia has also been become the third-largest donor to the U.N.’s relief agency in Palestine, giving tens of millions of dollars to help rebuild Gaza and assist Palestinian refugees.

“It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure,” the secretary-general said. “Scrutiny is a natural and necessary part of the work of the United Nations.”

Ban called the decision “one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make.”

Saudi Ambassador to the U.N. Abdallah al-Mouallimi, who held his own press conference afterward, offered his own back-handed confirmation of what happened. “We didn’t use threats,” he said, “but such listing will obviously have an impact on our relations with the U.N.”

“It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation,” he concluded.

Ban has invited a team from the Saudi-led coalition to New York to conduct a “joint review” ahead of scheduled U.N. discussions on the report, scheduled for August.

On Monday, however, after the changes were announced, the Saudi ambassador to the U.N. declared that the changes were “final and unconditional” and that Saudi Arabia had been “vindicated.”

UN EU are so desperate for money to run their catastrophic socialist business and as well to blind people to make them think they are such good businessman while they have to ask money to anybody if they had to sell themselves to the devil they would