The Biggest Cover-Up of All — Saudi Royals’ Links to 9/11

With U.S.-Saudi relations at low ebb, the bill moving through Congress — just passed unanimously by the Senate — that would permit the families of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom for its alleged involvement has led to threats. As retaliation the Saudi foreign minister came to Washington to say the kingdom would unload some $750 billion of U.S. assets lest they might be frozen if the lawsuit were allowed to go through.

The Obama administration has lobbied hard against the bill, infuriating those families, who effectively represent some 2,600 Americans and almost 400 from 90 countries who lost their lives in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and who find it inexplicable that their government favors the Saudis over the lives of its own people.

The bill, which has broad bipartisan report, has again raised the question of why the American
President Bush with then Crown Prince Abdallah,
now King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

public is not allowed to see 28 pages that were removed from the 2002 report of the joint congressional investigation of the attacks. That those pages have been locked away in a secure basement room in the Capitol building for going on fourteen years fairly shouts that the Saudis have something to hide so inflammatory that first George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama for almost eight years, have seen fit to protect the Saudi royal family. President Obama has twice, and in-person, assured family members that he would have the pages released, but has gone back on his pledge. Obama is clearly running out the clock.

The media have been more concerned with Congress's bill, a troublesome foray into foreign policy, and the White House response, and has made only passing mention of the missing pages, but that's the far bigger story that follows.

That Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis is more than a coincidence. That special considerations were given to Saudis in this country immediately after the attacks is at the root of the government spiriting away the report's pages. In his book, "House of Bush, House of Saud", Journalist Craig Unger outlines connections between the Saudis and American business interests over decades that exchanged "lucrative oil deals" for American military protection.

No strangers to the oil patch, the Bush family had developed a close relationship with the Saudi royal family. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States spanning four presidents, "was so close to the President's father, George H. W. Bush, that he was considered almost a member of the family", Unger writes. Obviously under orders from George W. Bush, days after 9/11 the FBI facilitated the departure from the U.S. of some 160 Saudis,
President George W. Bush meets with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, on August 27, 2002, at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
even including members of the large bin Laden family, on specially chartered flights. The Saudis fled in fear of retribution, but whereas the FBI said it questioned those departing, the speedy exodus of so many couldn't have allowed for very thorough vetting, skeptics point out, and documents say several were never questioned. The interviews were disparaged as "courtesy chats" by a former Army interrogator who is now director of intelligence at Judicial Watch, a rightist watchdog group.

The George W. Bush administration immediately removed and classified the 28-page section of the 2002 congressional investigation of the 9/11 attacks. Release of the chapter "would make it harder for us to win the war on terror", was Bush's elliptical explanation. Two lawmakers — Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) — read the redacted pages and, bound by secrecy law, could only say they have nothing to do with national security. They were “absolutely shocked” to learn that a foreign state had a high level involvement in the attacks. They were certainly referring to Saudi Arabia.

In a 2014 New Yorker investigative article, al Qaeda authority Lawrence Wright traces connections between the Saudis' Ministry of Islamic Affairs and two Saudi hijackers who slipped CIA surveillance in Malaysia and entered the United States undetected at Los Angeles.

That ministry turns out to be the same front that we alluded to in our 2014 article, "Arabs Tell U.S., ‘You Do the Fighting’ ", where we say, "the Saudis send emissaries to their embassies and consulates in Muslim and other countries to promote Salafism", the severe form of Islam at the core of ISIS. The lawsuit brought by the wives of the 9/11 victims claims that charities managed by the ministry in the U.S. were in fact conduits for funding al Qaeda with Americans' donations. The suit claims that money contributed over three years by Prince Bandar's wife found its way into al Qaeda coffers, and the suit therefore names the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a defendant.

Wright exposed what may be found in the 28 pages: the assistance reportedly given to the two Saudis — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — who had come to Los Angeles to somehow, somewhere, learn to fly Boeing jetliners. They spoke no English, so they clearly needed help. They were given it by 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.

And indeed, he was connected to the Islamic affairs ministry. On the one day that al-Bayoumi made an infrequent trip from San Diego to Los Angeles to call at the ministry, he just happened to connect with the two would-be 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 there. Leaks about the missing pages say that a Saudi government official helped the two find an apartment and co-signed the lease. Another handler was wired $130,000 by the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. — at the time, Prince Bandar. Yet the FBI was actively prohibited by the Bush administration from investigating those links.

The way was paved for the two Saudi hijackers to learn to fly. Could Saudi ministry officials claim this was just a helping hand extended to two countrymen, lost in America without even English, unaware of or unquestioning of their puzzling mission to learn to fly commercial passenger jetliners?

Just last year, more came to light. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent believed to have been the intended 20th hijacker
Zacarias Moussaoui
in the 9/11 attacks had he not been arrested weeks before, testified from his federal "supermax" prison in Colorado that members of the Saudi royal family were contributors to al Qaeda in the 1990s. He also says that in Afghanistan he once discussed with a member of the Saudi embassy in Washington how the American president's aircraft, Air Force One, might be brought down with a Stinger missile. He said he was supposed to return to Washington with the embassy official to scout for shoot-down locations, but his arrest intervened.

Moussaoui's testimony, if true, suggests that what is in those classified pages may prove to be far more incendiary than previously imagined. In response to his allegations, the Saudi embassy here called him a "deranged criminal...whose words have no credibility". At the time of his trial, his lawyers had Moussaoui diagnosed as mentally ill, but he was deemed competent enough to stand trial. In the recent testimony "my impression was that he was of completely sound mind — focused and thoughtful", according to Sean Carter, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the deposition.

The lawsuit brought against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the attacks was originally brought in 2002 and has dragged on so long, fought strenuously by the Saudis who have claimed sovereign immunity, that The New York Times likens it to Jarndyce v. Jarndyce of Charles Dicken's "Bleak House".

Moussaoui asked to testify. He had made the request in a letter to the presiding judge. Proof enough that he was not prompted to do so — and why would the government pressure him to reveal what they would prefer be kept secret — is that "lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons" preceded his being allowed to come forward.

Justice Department lawyers came away with 100 pages of testimony in which Moussaoui says he had acted as a messenger for Osama bin Laden. That had caused him to come in direct contact with various members of the Saudi royal family. Most notable among them, he says, was Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is now king of Saudi Arabia. The purpose was to raise money, first for militants fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and then for what they became: al Qaeda.

Bin Laden had Moussaoui develop a database of donors to al Qaeda. Moussaoui says his list included the Saudi intelligence chief, Saudi clerics who promoted an extreme brand of Islam called Salafism, and Bush friend and ambassador Prince Bandar.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have run interference for the Saudi regime during the entirety of their presidencies,
President Bush with then
Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia
a regime that that we now hear has allegedly funded al Qaeda from the highest levels of the royal family, a regime that has funded a virulent form of Islam throughout the Muslim
President Obama with now King Salman
world that has spawned ISIS, a regime that has left it to the U.S. to combat it. It is no surprise that our government has a lot to hide from the American people.

There seems to be general agreement that the 28 pages should be declassified. 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. A concern for "embarrassing" the Saudis is an insupportable reason for suppression.