Bush Removed Section from Congressional Probe to Protect Saudis

The George W. Bush administration removed and classified an entire 28-page section from a joint Congressional investigation of the September 11, 2001 attacks, reports Lawrence Wright in a New Yorker article. Bush himself said release of the chapter "would make it harder for us to win the war on terror" but two lawmakers — Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) — who have read the redacted pages say they have nothing to do with national security. They were instead “absolutely shocked” to learn that a foreign state had a high level involvement in the attacks.

That state is Saudi Arabia, from which came 15 of the 9/11 hijackers. The missing section of the report, which sits in a secure underground room in the Capitol building, traces connections between the Saudis' Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the two hijackers who slipped CIA surveillance in Malaysia and entered the United States undetected at Los Angeles.

The ministry is the same front that we allude to in "No Sign of Arab Nations…" on this page which says, "The Saudis send their emissaries to their embassies and consulates in Muslim and other countries to promote Salafism", the severe form of Islam at the core of ISIS. There is a law suit brought by the wives of the 9/11 victims which claims that charities managed by the ministry here were in fact conduits for funding al Qaeda with Americans' donations. The suit claims that money contributed over three years by the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. — Prince Bandar bin Sultan — found its way into al Qaeda coffers, and the suit therefore names the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a defendant.

Wright makes the point that the two Saudis — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — had come to Los Angeles to somehow, somewhere learn to fly Boeing jetliners, yet spoke no English, so they clearly needed help. The secret 28 pages say they found it under the wing of a Saudi named Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived in San Diego where he nominally had a job with a Saudi aviation services company for seven years but never seemed to show up for work. Even his Arab circle of friends thought he was a spy. Indeed, he was connected to the Islamic affairs ministry. On the same day that he traveled from San Diego to Los Angeles to call at the ministry al-Bayoumi just happened to connect with the hijackers. He told investigators he overheard the two speaking with a Gulf accent at a restaurant where he and a friend stopped for lunch. Al-Bayoumi struck up a conversation and offered to help, moving them to San Diego and introducing them to the Arab community. The Saudis learned to fly.

There seems to be general agreement that the 28 pages should be declassified, and Jones and Lynch are working to make that happen. They want Congress to pass a resolution to ask President Obama to declassify the document. The heads of the 9/11 commission, former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, agree. Their view is there is no justification for holding back whatever we know about those who plotted and executed the 9/11 attacks and the "embarrassment" of the Saudis (who are now offering so little help combating ISIS) is an insupportable reason for suppression. In response to the 9/11 wives' urgings, President Obama has twice agreed to lift the classification, but has not done so. Given his record for conducting what we have called the most secretive government in U.S. history, we won't bet that he will.

The relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family has been a controversial subject. Journalist Craig Unger outlined in his
book, "House of Bush, House of Saud", business deals over decades that exchanged "lucrative oil deals" for American military protection. Prince Bandar "was so close to the President's father, George H. W. Bush, that he was considered almost a member of the family". This led to inevitable suspicion of "coddling" when, days after 9/11, the FBI facilitated the departure from the U.S. of some 160 Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, on specially chartered flights. The Saudis fled in fear of retribution but whereas the FBI said it questioned those taking their leave, documents say several were never questioned. The speedy exodus of so many couldn't have allowed for very thorough vetting, skeptics point out. The interviews were disparaged as "courtesy chats" by the director of intelligence at Judicial Watch, who had been an Army interrogator.

The 28 missing pages adds another chapter to this story.