Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

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Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:34 am

Investigating the Saudi Government's 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disilliusionment - Sen. Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt 1

On RAI with Paul Jay, Senator Bob Graham explains why he persists in making the case that facts directly connect the Saudi government with 9/11 conspirators - November 28, 13




Reality Asserts Itself - Bob Graham

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham says greater awareness of Saudi Arabia as “essentially a co-conspirator in 9/11...would change the way in which, particularly in the current milieu of events in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is being viewed” by the U.S. public.

Saudi Arabia, an historic ally of the U.S., had put significant pressure on the Obama administration in recent months to militarily intervene in Syria, and had also attempted to derail recent U.S.-Iran rapprochement.

Senator Graham co-chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that investigated intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. The inquiry’s final report included a 28-page chapter describing the Saudi connection to 9/11, but it was completely redacted by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“I was stunned that the intelligence community would feel that it was a threat to national security for the American people to know who had made 9/11 financially possible,” said Senator Graham. “And I am sad to report that today, some 12 years after we submitted our report, that those 28 pages continue to be withheld from the public.”

The investigation into 9/11 intelligence failures and the subsequent cover-up of Saudi involvement by the Bush administration led Senator Graham to question his life-long reverence of presidential authority.

“I grew up with the idea that the president was almost a divine figure, that he was the literally the father of the country and always acted in a way that was beneficial to the mass of people in America,” said Graham. “You may have disagreements with the current occupant of the office, but the presidency itself was a beknighted position deserving of your respect and worthy of your confidence.”

“So when I got involved particularly at the national level in the U.S. Senate and saw some of the things that were happening—which were not theoretical; they were things that I was dealing with on a very day-to-day hands-on basis that were contrary to that view of what was the presidency—it was a very disillusioning experience. And maybe some of the comments that I make in the book Intelligence Matters reflect that path to disillusionment,” said Graham.

Transcript
Investigating the Saudi Government's 9/11 Connection and the Path to
Disilliusionment - Sen. Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt 1PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Miami Lakes, Florida. And welcome to Reality Asserts Itself.
You're wondering why I'm in Miami Lakes, Florida. Well, you're going to find out in just a few seconds.
But we're going to deal with a rather serious subject in this interview. We're going to deal with the role of Saudi Arabia and its effect or influence on U.S. foreign policy and a little bit of background, recent background about U.S.-Saudi relations.
Saudi Arabia, as everyone that follows this story, has been certainly one of the driving force in what's unfolding in Syria. The armed opposition in Syria has been armed by Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis have been putting enormous pressure on the American government to directly militarily intervene.
United States is now involved in negotiations with Iran to make some kind of a pact that would have the Iranians back off on any nuclear program they have. The Iranians say it's not a weaponized program, and so does American intelligence, but there's a lot of fear or concern on the part of many that in fact it could become a weaponized program. So negotiations are finally taking place, but it's fairly well known that the Saudis are not very happy about these negotiations, along with Israel, at least behind the scenes. The Saudis have been saying these negotiations should not even take place. Prince Bandar, head of the Saudi National Security Council, recently told European diplomats that the United States was losing its credibility in the Middle East because it wouldn't militarily intervene in Syria and because of what they see as backing down to Iran.
I attended a dinner recently, where I was rubbing elbows with Saudi and other Gulf Cooperation Council country and military leadership, and all the talk at that dinner was about the Saudis wanting the United States not only to intervene in Syria but to actually directly attack Iran.
So if Saudi Arabia's having so much influence on U.S. foreign policy, shouldn't we pay attention to the words of Senator Bob Graham, who wrote a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror? In that book he said fairly strong things about Saudi Arabia. Here's what Senator Bob Graham wrote towards the end of his book. I believe--and I'm adding a word here to give it context--there is a state-sponsored terrorist support network that still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States.
The whole book is about the role of Saudi Arabia and its connection to 9/11. And according to Bob Graham, members of the Saudi government and royal family were directly connected to inspiring, funding, and helping support the organization of certain 9/11 conspirators. That came about as a result of his work as chair of the congressional joint committee on 9/11. So if we're going to look at today's effect and role of Saudi Arabia on current policy and the important role it's playing, we should also pay attention to the recent history of Saudi Arabia.
And now joining us to talk about all of this is Senator Bob Graham.
Thanks very much for joining us.
BOB GRAHAM, FMR. U.S. SENATOR: Thank you very much. And I appreciate your interest in this very important and underreported subject.
JAY: And strangely underreported, given that this isn't just some piece of history that should be in a museum and isn't interesting to discuss it. But we're talking about the active role of Saudi Arabia today, not just in terms of affecting U.S. foreign-policy, but on other issues that you mention in terms of ongoing--potentially ongoing terrorist networks.
GRAHAM: Their active role, and how our perspective role on that active role would be different if there was an acceptance of the fact that Saudi Arabia was essentially a co-conspirator in 9/11, how much that would change the way in which, particularly in the current milieu of events in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is being viewed.
JAY: It would change everything, given so much of our policy is based on Saudi Arabia as being, you know, at least one of, if not the primary ally in the Middle East.
GRAHAM: And that perception that Saudi Arabia since World War II has been the object of a special relationship with United States I think has contributed--not the total reason, but a factor, in that we have gone so unexamined in this current relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
JAY: Okay. Before we go further, let me introduce Bob Graham properly, because Senator Graham is not just a senator, in the sense that there's a lot of senators but not all senators have played as prominent a role as Senator Graham has in the American intelligence community. And here's a little bit of an introduction, 'cause I know he's done a lot more than what I'm about to say.
So Bob Graham was born in 1936, was the 38th Governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and a United States senator from that state from 1987 to 2005.
Graham tried unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He dropped out of the race on October 6, 2003. He announced his retirement from the Senate on November 3 of that year.
Graham is now concentrating his efforts on the newly established Bob Graham Center for Public Service at his graduate alma mater, at the University of Florida.
After he left office, he served as chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Graham also served as cochair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. And he's a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the CIA External Advisory Board.
So Senator Graham is not just a senator. Senator Graham has been at the center of a lot of very important issues that face American intelligence.
So, Senator Graham, in this show, Reality Asserts Itself--and you're going to--this is a bit of a tease, all this, because we're going to go back a little bit. We usually start with little bit of a back story of our subjects and a little bit of why they think what they think. And then we kind of get into the issues.
So tell us a little bit about growing up. Your father was a state senator. He was a dairy farmer, and became a fairly prominent family in Florida.
GRAHAM: I grew up on a farm which was an island in the middle of the Everglades. When I was a boy, I grew up with alligators and frogs and all the critters in the Everglades, and that had a significant effect on me, particularly my concerns about the environment and the protection of our water and land resources.
My father was a very strong influence on me. He had been a mining engineer in the West back in the beginning of the 20th century. He was born in 1885 of Canadian parents and was a very strong, forceful person, but had a special way of relating to people. People wanted to work with him because they admired his honesty and forthrightness and that he treated people with dignity and respect. Those are qualities which I learned from him and I hope I've been able to apply.
JAY: Now, he became a state senator. Did you grow up in a house filled with politics?
GRAHAM: Yes. He became a state senator because in the mid-1930s there was a great deal of corruption in South Florida. Al Capone had moved much of his operation from Chicago to Miami. My father was offended by that. And although he never had been in politics before, he thought one way that he might make a contribution would be to be elected to the Florida State Senate at a time when the state exercised almost total control over cities and counties in Florida.
He was elected. In fact, one of the first things he did was abolish the city of Hialeah, which was somewhat at the center of the corruption in Dade County, and then reestablished the city of Hialeah, naming the mayor and all the members of the City Council. Those new members in turn fired the police chief, brought in some honest people. Then Hialeah for a period of time was a very clean city. And I think that influence has continued to today.
JAY: Now, when you grew up, in terms of your conception of America and the American narrative, you know, there's an official narrative, and then there's kind of a real history. You become, when you are a senator, a very vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. And in your book you're pretty clear that you think that the Bush-Cheney administration essentially lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When you were growing up, could you imagine such a thing? You're seeing corruption, but can you believe the president would lie America into war?
GRAHAM: No. I grew up with the idea that the president was almost a divine figure, that he was the literally the father of the country and always acted in a way that was beneficial to the mass of people in America. I had very high reverence that you may have disagreements with the current occupant of the office, but the presidency itself was a beknighted position deserving of your respect and worthy of your confidence.
So when I got involved particularly at the national level in the U.S. Senate and saw some of the things that were happening--which were not theoretical; they were things that I was dealing with on a very day-to-day hands-on basis that were contrary to that view of what was the presidency--it was a very disillusioning experience. And maybe some of the comments that I make in the book Intelligence Matters reflect that path to disillusionment.
JAY: Prior to the Iraq War, are there moments on that path?
GRAHAM: That was the dramatic moment. There were some other things that I observed while I was in public office that caused me to adopt a more pragmatic and a less I'll give you the benefit of the doubt approach [crosstalk]
JAY: What year are you in the Senate?
GRAHAM: I'm in the Senate from 1987.
JAY: And when do you get onto the Intelligence Committee?
GRAHAM: In 1993.
JAY: So from '93 forward--and I suppose a lot of this stuff is classified--but are there things that you know from being on the Intelligence Committee that we're on this path to disillusionment?
GRAHAM: Again, the circumstances that surrounded 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War were the epiphany events in my full appreciation of this. But there had been other things that had occurred which began to harden me for this epiphany which I was to experience in the near future.
JAY: Are there examples of that? And let me say, because--I mean, you pursue stuff with your committee on 9/11 that it would've been a lot easier for you not to pursue, and especially would've been a lot easier for you to shut up afterwards. But you didn't. I mean, you wrote a book about it. You wrote a novel, because some of the stuff was classified, and the only way to get a sense of it was through fiction. And you write a nonfiction book, where you really come out with some bold statements. It would have been a lot easier for you to keep quiet. So what makes you that person?
GRAHAM: I think it's my growing up experience, the influence of my father, the unvarnished patriotism which, as a 50-year-old, became a little less unvarnished as I saw some of the realities of activities that fell short of my expectations of how people in the highest office should perform.
JAY: Now, the thing that brought this to my attention and I think that made this so much news was that when your committee reported, it became a story for those that followed this that there were--was it 27 or 28 pages?
GRAHAM: There were 28 pages in the final report, out of over 800 total, which were totally censored from--that were one to the end of that chapter. That was the chapter that largely dealt with the financing of 9/11, who paid for these very complex and in many instances expensive activities that were the predicate for 9/11. I was stunned that the intelligence community would feel that it was a threat to national security for the American people to know who had made 9/11 financially possible. And I am sad to report that today, some 12 years after we submitted our report, that those 28 pages continue to be withheld from the public.
JAY: Now, it's fairly clear from your book what's in the 28 pages, I mean, in general terms. The Times did a report on those 28 pages. A journalist for The Times spoke with someone who'd actually seen the 28 pages--didn't reveal the name. But apparently it's the actual names of the people in the Saudi government and Saudi royal family that are in on financing 9/11 conspirators. And your book makes it pretty clear that that's what it's about.
First of all, who ordered the redaction, that you weren't allowed to say this?
GRAHAM: First, I'm going to have to withhold my comment on what you have just said. I am under the strictures of classification. I have--although it was written in 2002, I still have a reasonably good remembrance of what was in those 28 pages, but I'm frustrated because I can't talk about it.
JAY: I know. And that's why I quoted The Times and didn't ask you.
GRAHAM: I appreciate--.
JAY: 'Cause I know you can't say it. But The Times said they had talked to someone. And I'm not even asking you to confirm it, 'cause that might get you in hot water, too. But the report from The Times was that this is actual names, and you actually said--you pointed and said who's who, and that all got redacted.
GRAHAM: Yeah.
JAY: So in the next segment of our interview with Senator Bob Graham, we're going to dig into the evidence uncovered by his inquiry and why he thinks the Saudi government and members of the royal family were directly involved in the events of 9/11.
Please join again on The Real News Network for Reality Asserts Itself with Senator Bob Graham.


Revealing the 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo the Entire US-Saudi Alliance - Sen. Bob Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt2


PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself with Senator Bob Graham. We're talking about the Saudi role in the events of 9/11 and Saudis' influence on U.S. foreign policy.
The biography of Senator Graham in length you will find below our video player here. But just quickly again, Senator Graham was the 38th Governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987. He was a U.S. senator from Florida from '87 to 2005. He was on the Senate intelligence committee, and he chaired the congressional joint committee on 9/11.
Thanks again for joining us.
BOB GRAHAM, FMR U.S. SENATOR: Thank you.
JAY: Senator Graham is also the author of the book Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America's War on Terror.
Thanks.
GRAHAM: Good. Thank you.
JAY: So one question that's always kind of bothered me, 'cause I personally haven't been able to find something obvious about this--and there's so much to read, and I haven't read it all, but it's been reported that Prince Bandar, who was then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, within hours of 9/11, contacts what we now know must have been President Bush, because the heads of all the other agencies--it was very interesting. Nine-eleven Commission, they kept asking to the head of the FBI: did you authorize these flights to get Saudis out of the country? And he said no. And then the CIA said no. But I think it's fairly well known now it was the White House. But Prince Bandar, within hours of the attack, wants to get leading Saudis out of the country because 15 of the 19 conspirators on the planes are Saudis. Well, how does he know within hours of the attack that there are so many Saudis involved in this?
GRAHAM: It doesn't surprise me that he knew that. At the worst, you can say he knew it because he was aware that this plot was developing before 9/11. At the best, his press people had access to the wire services, which quickly did identify that 15 of the 19 people were Saudis. So I'm not--.
JAY: Now, how did the American government and then the wire services, how did anyone know so quickly?
GRAHAM: Well, they quickly found out who the people were because they had their names on the manifest of the four airplanes which they had entered. And some of these people, once their names popped up, were well known to the intelligence agencies. Two of them had participated in what was referred to as "the summit of terrorists" that took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. Others were not as well known. But it didn't take long to determine something as basic as what were the nationalities of these 19 people. So that doesn't surprise me.
What does surprise me is the reaction of the United States (and I think this was at the highest level--the president of the United States), how they reacted to this request. Here you have a mass murder, mainly U.S. citizens killed. Here you've got people who might have information about this mass murder that law enforcement would like to fully interrogate before they were out of our jurisdiction. And yet the president of the United States agreed, at the request of the Saudi ambassador, to allow a chartered plane to fly from Lexington, Kentucky, back to the Middle East with 144 persons who had not been prescreened, interviewed, or in any meaningful manner debriefed in terms of what they knew about this situation. After the flight, the FBI said, had we known who these people were, we would in fact have interviewed a number of them. They were people of interest.
JAY: So how do you explain it?
GRAHAM: I think the explanations are murky. And there are many. One is that the United States has had a special relationship with Saudi Arabia that goes back to World War II: we provide them a defense cover; they provide us a reliable source of petroleum. Some of it was the special relationship with the Bush family. Going back to the president's grandfather, there had been a close family relationship between the Bushes and the House of Saud. Other reasons might have to do with the fact that Saudi Arabia was looked at as being a source of stability in a very turbulent Middle East, and that we needed to keep their credibility and respond to their request. Bandar had said that precisely because three-quarters of the hijackers had been Saudis, that that put all persons of Saudi ancestry in the United States at some risk. And he selected who he thought were the ones that were most at risk, most prominent, probably closest to the royal family, to have this--.
JAY: And members of the bin Laden family.
GRAHAM: Yes, there were several members of the bin Laden family, which meets both tests: they were members of the bin Laden family, and that family was itself close to the royal family. And at a time when the request was made, most aviation in the United States was grounded. By the time they actually executed the flight, that restriction had largely been lifted.
JAY: I think the big issue isn't how could the plane fly. The big issue is how did they let a plane fly with people that might have been involved in the events.
GRAHAM: Because they weren't very curious as to what those people had known, or there were--I think more likely there were factors that went beyond finding out about 9/11 that trumped the normal policy of full briefing and interrogation--or debriefing and interrogation before people were allowed to leave the country.
JAY: Well, what--we'll kind of get into this as we move along, but does there not seem to you--and in your book you outline various points at which the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented.
GRAHAM: About a dozen.
JAY: Does there not seem to have been almost a culture that's almost deliberately created not--that goes beyond lack of curiosity? And, like, I don't understand this. You become--you're president. You take over a new administration. Your head of CIA comes in in his first briefing, and according to George Tenet, he tells President Bush the number-one security threat to the United States is bin Laden and al-Qaeda. And then they demote Richard Clarke. How do you demote your antiterrorism czar, and at a time when you've been told this is your biggest national security threat? If you don't like Clarke, fine. You get somebody else. But why would you reduce his level, which was more or less cabinet level access, to when--like, Clarke testifies in 9/11 he couldn't get anyone's attention. He said our hair was on fire; there was so much going on that summer that we thought something might be coming, and we could get anyone's attention. It's almost like it goes beyond, almost, a lack of curiosity.
GRAHAM: Yeah. This culture of protection of the Saudis ran up and down the ranks of the federal government. A very significant event occurred at the Orlando airport in 2001, early in the year, when a man arrived from Saudi Arabia and was seen by one of the agents at the airport, one of the customs agents, as being suspicious. And so they interviewed him to find out why would a person have flown all the way from Saudi Arabia to Orlando for what appeared to be just a few days, maybe even hours, before he turned around and flew back. There had been some instances in which professional hitmen were brought into the United States to carry out a murder and then quickly leave, and the customs agent was suspicious that that might be such a person. So he refused the man the right to enter the United States.
He was severely chastised by other customs agents, who said, your career is now over, because don't you remember we were told that we're supposed to treat Saudis differently than we treat other people. But he persisted. And, in fact, the man was returned without ever gaining legal access to the United States. That may have been--probably was the 20th hijacker who would have filled out the ranks of the five people on each of the four planes.
But even at the level of a customs agent at an airport in the United States, the idea that Saudis were going to be treated with greater deference was an accepted part of the operation. You can imagine what it was like as you moved up into the higher ranks of the federal government.
JAY: Well, if you combine that with what was clearly a message that was sent throughout the police to the FBI, to the intelligence agencies, that we're not very interested terrorism anymore--. Coleen Rowley that was part of the FBI group in Minneapolis that tried to get a warrant for Moussaoui, who was this guy learning to take off and not land, and the air flight instructor tells the local FBI office, and they cannot get the warrant. FBI headquarters won't give them the warrant to go get the computer. And it's a longer, detailed story. And if people want, they can go watch. We've interviewed Coleen Rowley. But I asked Coleen, what did you make of this? I mean, why? And she said there just seemed to be coming from the top a culture: don't follow terrorism; we're not interested in it.
GRAHAM: And we had a number of instances such as that. There was a very suspicious and I think potentially central figure in the Saudi relationship to the hijackers who was an elderly man, retired university professor, who in his dotage had taken to inviting young Saudis to live in his house as boarders. It was both a source of some income, but also some comfort. It happened that two of the boarders that this man invited to live in his house were future hijackers.
We very much wanted to interview that elderly former professor to find out just what had he learned having these two hijackers living literally under his roof. We were denied access. Here's--the joint intelligence committees of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are being told, you cannot talk to this man. We said, could we send you questions and--.
JAY: Who is this you're--.
GRAHAM: The FBI.
JAY: FBI.
GRAHAM: And they say, no, we won't present the questions to him.
So we went to a federal judge and got a subpoena to require this man's arrival. It was on a Friday afternoon. I had the subpoena in my hand. The FBI agent in charge was in a small room in the capital, and I was prepared to hand him the subpoena. And he backed up against the wall and said, we don't like to have our people subpoenaed. And they described him as being "our people" because he was--in addition to taking in boarders, he also was paid by the FBI to allegedly oversee the actions of young Saudis.
JAY: Yeah. Isn't that the point? He was an FBI informant.
GRAHAM: Yeah. So that's why they were hiding him so much.
But anyway, the man said don't force the subpoena on us on Monday; seventy-two hours from now we will deliver this man.
So the biggest mistake maybe I made in my public life was accepting the truthfulness, the veracity of that man's statement, 'cause I did not push the subpoena into his hands. Seventy-two hours passed. No witness came forward. And from that point forward, they just ran the clock out until the session of Congress that we had legal authority to conduct our investigation ran out. And to my knowledge nobody has ever interviewed that man, who I think has a lot to say and to contribute to our understanding of the Saudi role in 9/11.
JAY: Where is he now?
GRAHAM: It think he's still in San Diego. The last time I checked, which was three or four years ago, he was.
JAY: This must frustrate you to no end that you weren't able to finish your work, in a sense, and then it has left the public discourse. There's no further inquiries.
GRAHAM: Well, what I've been thinking a lot about recently--and we're going through the period recognizing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy--a lot of this discussion has gone back to various theories about how was Oswald able to do this. Was he helped by the mob, by the Cubans or somebody? My question is: what difference does it make? If you'd found out that, yes, there was such a conspiracy, how is that relevant to any decision that we would be making today?
In contrast, the issue of whether the 19 hijackers acted alone or whether they had a support network has enormous current consequences. If in fact the Saudi government was the source of financial, logistical support, provision of anonymity that allowed these people to stay in the country such a long time and go undiscovered, if they were part of the system that made that happen, think of what it would mean to U.S.-Saudi relations today. It would be a complete overturning of the premises upon which we have been dealing with Saudi Arabia, that it was a loyal ally of the United States to now being seen as a country which was prepared to sell its soul to the worst in the world, even if that meant putting the United States in jeopardy and the loss of life of 3,000 people.
JAY: Okay. In the next part of our interview, we'll ask Senator Graham a little more about why he thinks this is the case. Please join us on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News with Senator Bob Graham.



Why Would Saudi Arabia Support the 9/11 Conspirators? Why Would the US Government Cover it Up?

Senator Bob Graham on Reality Asserts Itself (Part 3)


Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, believes that the Saudi government “had a high and what has thus far turned out to be credible expectation that their role” in 9/11 “would not be exposed” by the U.S. government.

“Everything that the federal government has done since 9/11 has had as one of its outcomes, if not its objectives—and I believe it was both outcome and objective—that the Saudis' role has been covered,” says Graham.

Senator Graham had talked to the other co-chair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the two chairs of the citizen’s 9/11 commission about the possibility of the 19 hijackers acting independently.

“All three of them used almost the same word—implausible—that it is implausible that that could have been the case. Yet that has now become the conventional wisdom to the aggressive exclusion of other alternatives,” says Graham.

Graham says it is also possible that the Saudis gave financial support for Osama bin Laden’s operations in order to stop him from launching a campaign of civil unrest within Saudi Arabia as retaliation for allowing U.S. troops to occupy a part of the country during the first Gulf War.

The Saudis' “confidence in the fact the United States would not react, or that the United States would not go to the extremes that in fact it has to cover up their involvement, were sufficient to outweigh the reality that bin Laden had the capability and the will to topple the monarchy,” says Senator Graham.

Transcript
Why Would Saudi Arabia Support the 9/11 Conspirators, Why Would the US
Gov. Cover it Up? - Sen. Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt3PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself with Senator Bob Graham.
Senator Graham was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was also the chair of the congressional joint committee into 9/11. And he held many other important positions on intelligence, and from 2010 to 2012 was on the CIA External Advisory Board.
Thanks for joining us again, Senator.
So we were talking off-camera. And I think we're going to just pick up where we were, and then we'll kind of get back to where I was headed in the interview.
But we were talking about the role of the media and how little and practically no discourse there is, debate, followup on issues raised by your commission and other books that have come out on the whole issue of the Saudi 9/11 commission. What do you make of that?
BOB GRAHAM, FMR U.S. SENATOR: It's an enigma to me as to why something that is so important, not just to be sure we have a historical record right, but that justice is done--. One of the side consequences of this coverup of the Saudis is the 3,000 families and survivors of the victims of 9/11 have been trying to get justice in a federal court for their losses. And in each instance, they have been turned away under the shield of sovereign immunity. You cannot sue Saudi Arabia. And the United States government has gone into the courthouse on the side of the Saudis, not on the side of the U.S. citizens who have lost so grievously.
So this is an issue that is contemporary and has real impact and significance today. And why major U.S. media has not seen this as an issue worthy of in-depth investigation and dogged followthrough is an enigma to me.
JAY: Now, when the Saudis are asked about this issue, the former head of Saudi intelligence Turki says that the Saudi intelligence actually tried to warn the Bush administration that an attack was coming. He said that they had been monitoring people in the United States and that they told the Bush administration that they had specific information that something was coming and they were ignored, that there seemed to be no interest on the part of the Bush administration in what they had to say.
GRAHAM: I've heard rumors of that. I have not personally confirmed that that is an accurate statement. But I wouldn't be surprised. There was just sort of a general disbelief--I think the 9/11 Commission called it a lack of imagination--that something of this scale could occur in the United States, and therefore when people sounded alarms that it might in fact be on the verge of happening, they were largely ignored.
JAY: So when you say the Saudi state is involved in this, it's somewhat contradictory if the head of intelligence is trying to warn the United States that it's coming. I mean, do you see this as something that's, you know, government policy, or individuals in the government were involved?
GRAHAM: It wouldn't be government policy in the sense that someone would stand up in the State of the Union address and announce that we are going to have a policy of not following leads that suggest the United States may be in some immediate peril.
JAY: No. Back up. I'm talking about the Saudi policy. When you look at the Saudi role--and we're certainly going to get to, actually, where you're headed there, in terms of what we think was the U.S. government consciousness at the highest level on all of this, but right now I just wanted to ask, when you say this is the Saudi government involved, so is this Saudi government at the highest levels making Saudi government policy? Or these are individuals involved in the government and royal family that are doing something sort of on their own?
GRAHAM: The reality is that the line between what is private and what is public in a monarchy of the length and pervasive influence of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia is ephemeral. And, in fact, in these cases where Americans have tried to sue entities, some of which are governmental, some of which are what we would call private sector--some are even charitable--because of their alleged involvement in 9/11, the same shield of sovereign immunity has been raised by the Saudi government to protect everything that is of a Saudi origin. So they by their actions have accepted the fact that this is a fully integrated country, and it is legally possible to say that everything that happens is an action of the government.
JAY: Now, we're going to get into more detail later. And there's much, much more detail in Senator Graham's book Intelligence Matters about--you know, where his committee really traced the data points that connected Saudi government officials to the conspiracy. And we'll get into it a little bit later. But I still want to talk a little bit more big picture.
Why would they? Assuming you're right about the Saudis, what's in it for them?
GRAHAM: Well, I wrote a novel called Keys to the Kingdom out of frustration that much of what I knew had occurred had not been made available to the American people, because every time it was suggested, it was immediately classified and rendered out-of-bounds. It was mentioned to me by another former high-ranking government official that he, facing the same frustration, had overcome it by writing exactly what he would have written in a nonfiction book, but put the word "novel" on it, and it got by the censors.
So in the novel I suggest some answers to that, and I don't think they are farfetched or extreme. One of those is that we know that at the end of the first Gulf War, bin Laden was very angry at the royal family for having allowed U.S. troops, foreign troops of any nationality, to essentially occupy a portion of Saudi Arabia. He would--his anger was deepened by the fact that he had offered to become--come to the defense of the kingdom using several tens of thousands of war-hardened troops that had fought with him in Afghanistan against the Russians. That anger upset the royal family.
And so I project: what if bin Laden had said to the royal family, if you won't deal forcefully with the Americans, we will do it, but we need your help in terms of being able to assist, support, maintain our operatives who are going to be in the United States, and if you refuse to give us that support, then I'm going to launch civil unrest inside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and your monarchy will be under the same threat that the former Shah of Iran was when he was toppled from power?
JAY: Well, we know the Saudis took this threat pretty seriously, 'cause they actually made the American base move to Qatar.
GRAHAM: Yeah. And so I'm suggesting that something like that may have been the motivation, the excuse, the rationale that the Saudis look to to say, alright, we will in fact provide assistance to the 19 hijackers, or at least significant numbers of them, in order to avoid this credible threat of civil unrest.
JAY: But the Saudis are no fools. They have to know, whatever bin Laden might be able to throw at them, it's nothing compared to what the United States could throw at Saudi Arabia if it came out that the Saudi were involved at a governmental level. It's almost like they have to have known going in that this wasn't going to happen.
GRAHAM: Well, would a country whose ambassador was so brazen as to go into the private quarters of the White House within hours after an attack in which 15 of his fellow countrymen had been in lead positions and almost demand that the president of the United States facilitate 144 additional Saudis being able to get out of the country, would a country that had that kind of attitude towards the willingness of the United States to stand up for its own interest and not be cowered into submission, would not they be likely to have had that attitude towards the United States and therefore felt it was a risk that they were prepared to take to--.
JAY: But doesn't it lead you to think that they have good reason to think that they're not going to be targeted? I mean, you know, instead of regime--being in Afghanistan, if this had come out, regime change would have been in Saudi Arabia.
GRAHAM: Their level of confidence in the fact the United States would not react or that the United States would not go to the extremes that in fact it has to cover up their involvement were sufficient to outweigh the reality that bin Laden had the capability and the will to topple the monarchy and--.
JAY: 'Cause bin Laden has been quoted, assuming all this really is from bin Laden, that the plan was to suck the United States into a war in Afghanistan and, kind of Russian style, wear the United States out. And I think bin Laden apparently was a little disappointed that in fact the emphasis got moved to Iraq, 'cause they were hoping to tie American troops down in much bigger numbers. And it kind of worked out in the long run, in a sense, what they wanted, but not at the scale they wanted. They wanted a major presentation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and to be there for decades and decades and bleed the American economy. The Saudis have to understand that's his logic.
GRAHAM: Well, you know, we talk a lot about the intelligence capabilities of al-Qaeda. That's one of the reasons that the NSA is engaged in a lot of its data mining and other high-tech intelligence gathering operations.
The fact is, I think that if bin Laden was operating from the premise that he could suck the United States into Afghanistan and, once there, they would be treated as the Russians had been treated, a war of attrition and finally submission, the fact is, if he thought that way, his intelligence wasn't very good. The United States almost immediately instituted the single most effective aerial bombardment in the history of mankind in Afghanistan against troops and military installations. We were using--this was pre-drone--we were using traditional military aircraft with laser bombs, smart bombs, bombs that were able to get into places that previously had thought to be impregnable, and just devastated the Taliban's military ability.
JAY: But let's assume his intelligence was wrong--and I think it was, if that's what he said afterwards. But if that's what the plan was and the Saudis are in on this, then they have to do their own kind of math about where does all this lead. If this leads to--I mean, Saudis have to know the United States isn't going to just sit there and do nothing. It's going to come after--somebody's going to pay for this. And if it isn't going to be them, and they have confidence that their role in this is going to be hidden and covered up (and the evidence is, whether they were confident because they were told to be confident or not, their role was hidden; that much is a fact), then they start doing the math. And what I mean by math is they have to work out what the next steps and the consequences of this are. And either they share the belief that it's going to be a tie-down in Afghanistan, or for some reason they're also understanding that the real target's going to be Iraq and they don't mind.
GRAHAM: And therefore that they are immune, that the United States is going to take its vengeance out someplace else.
JAY: More or less on Saddam Hussein, yeah.
GRAHAM: Yeah. Well, I think, first, they had a high and what has thus far turned out to be credible expectation that their role would not be exposed. Everything that the federal government has done since 9/11 has had as one of its outcomes, if not its objectives--and I believe it was both outcome and objective--that the Saudis' role has been covered. So they could be prepared to assess it was a greater risk that bin Laden would attack them than that the United States would attack them, and therefore they, the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, took actions that would avoid bin Laden with some sense of immunity from the possibility of the United States attacking them.
JAY: Is there a possibility they shared the objective of drawing the United States into a war, that it isn't just out of fear of bin Laden that they share the agenda?
GRAHAM: Well, I don't know what they would want to accomplish by encouraging the United States to go into a war other than a war against the place where the attack against the United States had been organized and emanating.
JAY: We know within days of the attack, even though there's talk of what to do to Afghanistan, President Bush is already issuing instructions to get ready for a war with Iraq. If Prince Bandar is so close to President Bush that he sits in the living room--and I think it's smoking cigars; I don't know if he drank scotch or not. I don't suppose he's supposed to. But would he be unaware of that's where this would all lead?
GRAHAM: You know, we are now--.
JAY: It's speculation.
GRAHAM: We're now into the outer ranges of speculation.
I believe what we do know or are capable of knowing is what was the full extent of the Saudi role. We know they were involved in San Diego, where, under people who were employees of the Saudi government, protection was given to two of the 19 hijackers.
There was a very suspicious case in Sarasota Florida where three of the pilots of the planes were doing their flight training and at the same time were closely connected to a family of Saudis, which in turn was close to the royal family. That has been another area that has been closely held and with--except the American people had been blocked from understanding what happened in that instance.
What we don't know is what was going on in other places, like Falls Church, Virginia, places in New Jersey, other places in Florida, where there were substantial numbers of hijackers. Was a full investigation done to determine if they were receiving external support? And if so, why has this not been made available?
JAY: And your main point is that these 19 guys can't do this without a support network, and you have evidence the support network was at least in part linked to the Saudi government.
GRAHAM: Yeah. And I might say, I have personally talked to the other cochair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry, a man who was a very distinguished congressman and, later, director of the CIA, I have talked to the two chairs of the citizens' 9/11 Commission, asking them, what do you think were the prospects of these 19 people being able to plan, practice, and execute the complicated plot that was 9/11 without any external support? All three of them used almost the same word, implausible, that it is implausible that that could have been the case. Yet that has now become the conventional wisdom to the aggressive exclusion of other alternatives.
JAY: In the next segment of our interview with Senator Graham, we're going to look at the role of the Bush administration after 9/11 and before. In his book Senator Graham calls the Bush administration's hindrance of 9/11investigation "disgraceful", he goes on to write: "... orchestrated by the White House to protect not only the agencies that failed but also America's relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
So please join us for the next segment of our interview with Senator Bob Graham.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Dec 03, 2013 4:01 pm

Thank you for this, seemslikeadream. I'm glad that Graham is trying to keep visibility on the subject of deep state orchestration of the 9/11 attacks. But it seems to me, well, a bit limited. True, there are Saudi fingerprints all over it. But what about Pakistan? Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention, but I've never heard Graham mention Omar Saeed Sheikh or Mahmood Ahmed's role in the whole conspiracy. And I find the short-sightedness of this statement he made troubling:

GRAHAM: Well, what I've been thinking a lot about recently--and we're going through the period recognizing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy--a lot of this discussion has gone back to various theories about how was Oswald able to do this. Was he helped by the mob, by the Cubans or somebody? My question is: what difference does it make? If you'd found out that, yes, there was such a conspiracy, how is that relevant to any decision that we would be making today?
In contrast, the issue of whether the 19 hijackers acted alone or whether they had a support network has enormous current consequences.
(emphasis mine)


This complete ignorance of how a deep state operates is what reeks of limited hang-out to me.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby Searcher08 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 7:24 pm

It leapt out at me when Graham said:
That was the chapter that largely dealt with the financing of 9/11, who paid for these very complex and in many instances expensive activities that were the predicate for 9/11.


Which invites the questions:
What specifically were the many expensive activities that were the predicate of 9/11?
and
How in particular were they very complex?


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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby 8bitagent » Tue Dec 03, 2013 11:37 pm

I'm glad someone out there is keeping the Saudi-9/11 thing alive. In god, what's it been, 9 years since I started seriously looking at sept 11(around fall of 2004) it's the Saudi connection...scratch that, OVERWHELMING Saudi tentacles all over 9/11 that continue to not just stand up to scrutiny...but become even more and more clear. The Hamburg Mosque, Anwar Awlaki, CISCO and the choosing of the the flight schools, the Boston circle(Ptech, BMI, al Qadi, al Kifah and Care), San Diego, Virginia, and on and on and on.

I said it almost six years ago and I will repeat it again...the FBI report released in February 2008 is one of, if not the biggest smoking guns to 9/11. Along with the explosive 2011 Vanity Fair article "Kingdom and the Towers".
Anwar Awlaki linked to the purchase of Atta's plane ticket. Mystery men in the hotel rooms of the hijackers at the same time they would have been in the air. Strong suspicions of people
in airport worker clothes helping the hijackers. Preplanted weapons on the planes. The hijackers credit cars mysteriously STILL IN USE TWO WEEKS AFTER 9/11. That high level Saudi elite in the same hotel
as three of the hijackers the night before 9/11, who mysteriously fell near deathly ill the next night. Ramzi bin Alshidh in Germany with the phone number to Awlaki's mosque. Awlaki seen at a house party with Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar, along with their FBI informant houserenter and Saudi agent pals Omar Boyouimi and company.

I used to think that maybe this was all a smokescreen, "limited hangout", but the more time goes by the more it stands out.

I mean we now know that essentially the Saudis used al Qaeda to blow up the Marine barracks in 1996 to falsely blame on Hezbollah/Iran, and somehow got Louis Freeh and the FBI to go along with the story.
We see how Saudi Arabia was in bed with the neocons in the orchestration and desire for the Iraq invasion. We see how Saudi Arabia is trying to muscle Russia, and how they are chiefly financing the Syrian al Qaeda brigades.
Now obviously there's other interests at play...and like both the creation of the Mujahadeen and the BCCI scandal, it's no wonder we see strong links to Pakistan, Israel, Britain and American intelligence.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby Nordic » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:57 am

Makes me wonder if a limited hangout is better than nothing at all?

It became clear to me some time ago that what we are calling "the Saudis" here are the members of the cabal who do the dirty work and finance these sorts of things. Why? Because nobody can touch them. I mean, their fingerprints are all over 9/11, and nobody can do squat about it.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:08 pm

Sorry if I came off like a killjoy, 8bit and Nordic. I would love to see the Saudi angle, with all its dirty tentacles, exposed to the light of justice. I would love to believe that digging through that mud would open the Pandora's Box to awaken the mainstream to 9/11 reality. (I was going to say "truth", but it's amazing how the mainstream has debased that word.) But I recall Representative Curt Weldon's attempts to dig in to Able Danger (which in retrospect, I find fascinating was a DIA program, considering the often neglected ties the DIA has with Operation Gladio that I've recently been researching) seemed so promising back in 2005, and that went nowhere, except to an FBI probe against Weldon the following year.

Perhaps Graham will have better luck. But to take Graham's JFK analogy and run with it, investigating the Saudi role in 9/11 to the exclusion of ISI complicity is like investigating the Mafia role in the JFK assassination to the exclusion of CIA complicity. Granted, it's an imperfect analogy, and if opening the lid of the censored inquiry revealed the activities of Anwar Awlaki, Ptech, and even half of what 8bit mentioned, it would be a vast improvement over the OCT propagation in the Zelikow Report. I'll keep my fingers crossed and my eyes and ears open.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:23 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:14 pm

Hell yeah, I remember! You really had the OCT trolls' undies in a knot over that for a while. I guess the one thing Graham has going for him is that he doesn't have an office to lose anymore.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:51 pm

Nordic » Wed Dec 04, 2013 3:57 am wrote:
It became clear to me some time ago that what we are calling "the Saudis" here are the members of the cabal who do the dirty work and finance these sorts of things. Why? Because nobody can touch them. I mean, their fingerprints are all over 9/11, and nobody can do squat about it.



BINGO! Tens of thousands of posts I've made on para political forums and you just articulated it with two sentences. I mean people thought Iraq had some attache meet with Mohammed Atta in Prague, and that somehow helped justify an invasion. Saudi Arabia was directly linked to the blowing up of marines in 1996 and it was blamed on Iran and swept under the rug. Saudis are the hand noone dare judges. And there's a whole history between
Arab elites and Western power cabals as we all know.

From the two parter with Senator Graham, it sounds like what has been known...and to me it's not limited: The "Saudis" were intimately part of the 9/11 operation from multiple angles and there was a deliberate agenda to handicap the entire US customs/FBI/intelligence/police/security apparatus. People say "well 9/11 was just incompetence"....WHAT IF I tell people, the "incompetence" was INTENTIONALLY created and programmed in. A tower of Babel. And that aint "Lihop". The Saudis are the Serbian black hand working for even more hidden, darker and well connected interests. You can get away with anything on a global scale post 1979 if its filtered through a Saudi hand.

Look how Pakistan got chastised(but not outright repremanded) for protecting bin Laden(all part of the Kabuki, of course)

Three stellar, standout artifacts that really blow the lid off the Saudi angle

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/news ... 393703-423
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feat ... 011-201108
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:03 pm

stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Dec 04, 2013 3:08 pm wrote:Sorry if I came off like a killjoy, 8bit and Nordic. I would love to see the Saudi angle, with all its dirty tentacles, exposed to the light of justice. I would love to believe that digging through that mud would open the Pandora's Box to awaken the mainstream to 9/11 reality. (I was going to say "truth", but it's amazing how the mainstream has debased that word.) But I recall Representative Curt Weldon's attempts to dig in to Able Danger (which in retrospect, I find fascinating was a DIA program, considering the often neglected ties the DIA has with Operation Gladio that I've recently been researching) seemed so promising back in 2005, and that went nowhere, except to an FBI probe against Weldon the following year.

Perhaps Graham will have better luck. But to take Graham's JFK analogy and run with it, investigating the Saudi role in 9/11 to the exclusion of ISI complicity is like investigating the Mafia role in the JFK assassination to the exclusion of CIA complicity. Granted, it's an imperfect analogy, and if opening the lid of the censored inquiry revealed the activities of Anwar Awlaki, Ptech, and even half of what 8bit mentioned, it would be a vast improvement over the OCT propagation in the Zelikow Report. I'll keep my fingers crossed and my eyes and ears open.


Yeah that was a major wtf moment when Graham said JFK didnt matter. JFK still reverberates today.

BUT LIKE JFK, I suspect that 9/11 will go on forever til it's just a few elderly men mumbling about this or that theory. Noone cares. Once Bama got Sama, it was over. Sealed forever in even the most liberal of the public's mind.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:30 pm

Saudi-Israeli Alliance Boosts Al-Qaeda
December 4, 2013

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia and Israel see Iran as their worst enemy, but that obsession is allowing al-Qaeda to reassert itself in the Middle East, especially in war-torn Syria, and that could open the West to a new round of terrorist attacks, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

The Saudi-Israeli alliance has made hostility toward Iran a higher priority than neutralizing al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups, causing friction with the Obama administration and the West most apparent in the diplomatic sparks flying over negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and the Syrian civil war.

The Saudi monarchy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government view Iran as their gravest strategic threat and thus have pushed for a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities and have favored radical Sunni rebel groups in Syria over the Iranian-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad.


However, President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and some European leaders have grown increasingly alarmed that Sunni jihadists – drawing their financing from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states – are linking up with al-Qaeda and transforming parts of Syria into bases for terrorism.

These concerns also are putting strains on the regional collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Israel, two traditional adversaries that have only recently come together over mutual interests in seeking to shatter Iranian influence in the region and in supporting the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

At this point, the young Saudi-Israeli alliance appears to remain intact, with Netanyahu’s government directing most of its rhetorical fire against President Obama through its influential neoconservatives in the United States.

Prominent neocon opinion leaders have denounced Obama for engaging in Munich-style appeasement of Iran; they have portrayed him as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. Israel’s favored members of Congress also are pushing for more draconian sanctions against Iran in a provocative move that could torpedo Obama’s diplomacy.

But these strident attacks on the Iranian nuclear agreement risk a rupture of Netanyahu’s relations not only with the Obama administration but with some European states worried that al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria could pose a renewed terrorist threat to the Continent.

Already, President Putin has expressed his anger at Saudi Arabia for what he viewed as a not-so-subtle threat from Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan to unleash Chechen terrorists against the Winter Olympics in Sochi if Russia didn’t withdraw its support for the Assad regime in Syria.

Some rank-and-file Jewish supporters of Israel also have voiced concerns about Israel’s newfound alliance with the Saudi monarchy, especially given its adherence to ultraconservative Wahhabi Islam and its embrace of a fanatical hatred of Shiite Islam, a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that dates back 1,400 years.

So, Prime Minister Netanyahu may face a difficult choice, either advancing his new regional collaboration with the Saudis or risking the alienation of Israel’s traditional allies in Washington and European capitals.

Joint Interests

The Saudi-Israeli alliance has surfaced most notably in the two countries’ shared position seeking the overthrow of Syrian President Assad, an Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Assad’s regime is opposed by an increasingly extremist Sunni rebel movement drawing hundreds of jihadists from across the Muslim world, including Eastern Europe and the Chechen region of Russia.

But that did not deter Israel from siding with the Saudi-backed Syrian jihadists. In mid-September, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren announced that Israel would prefer to see the Saudi-backed extremists prevail over the continuation of the Iran-backed, mostly secular government of President Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

Saudi Arabia shares Israeli’s strategic view that the Shiite crescent, stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, must be broken.

Further advancing the Saudi-Israeli détente has been the emergence of the worldly Bandar as Saudi Arabia’s new intelligence chief. As the former Saudi ambassador to the United States who worked closely with the neocon administration of George W. Bush, Bandar doesn’t share the crude anti-Semitism and visceral antipathy toward Israel that many Saudi leaders did. He is a savvy player who understands the chess board of global geopolitics.

On Oct. 2, Israel’s Channel 2 TV news reported that senior Israeli security officials met with a high-level Gulf state counterpart in Jerusalem, believed to be Prince Bandar. And, a day before that TV report, Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at the new relationship in his United Nations General Assembly speech, saying:

“The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.”

Besides the shared Saudi-Israeli animosity toward Iran, the growing behind-the-scenes collaboration also has revolved around support for the military coup in Egypt that removed President Mohamed Morsi. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia supported the Egyptian military in its bloody coup against Morsi’s elected government because of Morsi’s association with the Muslim Brotherhood, a populist Sunni movement that was seen as a threat to Israel because of the Brotherhood’s ties to Hamas and to Saudi royals because it offered a democratic alternative to Sunni authoritarianism.

So, while Saudi Arabia assured the Egyptian coup regime a steady flow of money and oil, the Israelis went to work through their lobby in Washington to insure that President Obama and Congress would not declare the coup a coup and thus trigger a cutoff of U.S. military aid.

The emerging Saudi-Israeli alliance also has reflected a recognition that the two countries have complementary “soft power” strengths that – when combined – could create a new superpower in the Middle East and arguably the world. While the Israelis are masters of propaganda and political lobbying (especially in the United States), Saudi Arabia can pull strings through its extraordinary access to oil and money. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips into View.”]

Diverging Paths

But Israel and its neocon backers will have to keep American politicians and the U.S. populace in line despite the darkening prospect that the Saudi-Israeli desire to inflict a body blow against Iran by overthrowing Assad is worth the risk of turning Syria into a new base for al-Qaeda terrorism.

On Wednesday, the New York Times outlined that danger in a front-page story, reporting: “Intensifying sectarian and clan violence has presented new opportunities for jihadist groups across the Middle East and raised concerns among American intelligence and counterterrorism officials that militants aligned with Al Qaeda could establish a base in Syria capable of threatening Israel and Europe. …

“The concerns are based in part on messages relayed this year by Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s overall leader, indicating that he views Syria — where the number of jihadist rebels and foreign fighters is steadily rising — as a promising staging ground. …

“But [the Obama administration’s] striking at jihadist groups in Syria would pose formidable political, military and legal obstacles, and could come at the cost of some kind of accommodation — even if only temporary or tactical — with Mr. Assad’s brutal but secular government, analysts say. …

“It is not clear whether or when the White House would be willing to make such an abrupt shift in approach after years of supporting the Syrian opposition and calling for Mr. Assad’s ouster. It would certainly require delicate negotiations with Middle Eastern allies who were early and eager supporters of Syrian rebel groups, notably Saudi Arabia.

“One growing source of concern is the number of Muslims from Western countries who have gone to fight in Syria and might eventually return home and pose a terrorist threat. Analysts say at least 1,200 European Muslims have gone to Syria since the start of the war to join the fight, and dozens of Americans.”

Netanyahu’s Choice

So, the Netanyahu government faces a predicament. It can continue to expand its alliance with Saudi Arabia but – in doing so – it could further alienate the Obama administration and European leaders, especially if Israel’s obsession with Shiite-ruled Iran is seen as exacerbating the Sunni terrorist threat against the West.

Saudi royals have long had their fingerprints on terrorism from al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups. In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia teamed up with the Reagan administration to fund, train and arm the Afghan mujahedeen against a communist secular state in Afghanistan backed by the Soviet Union.

The anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan brought to prominence Saudi national Osama bin Laden and the Sunni terrorists who later consolidated themselves under the global brand, al-Qaeda. In the 1980s, these roving jihadists were hailed as freedom fighters and brave defenders of Islam, but – in the 1990s – they began targeting the United States with terrorist attacks.

Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda operatives – 15 identified as Saudi nationals – hijacked four U.S. commercial jets and used them to inflict some 3,000 deaths in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. At the time, Bandar was the Saudi ambassador in Washington and so close to the Bush family that he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.”

Bandar was also very close to the bin Laden family. After the 9/11 attacks, Bandar acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the Afghan jihad project. “I was not impressed, to be honest with you,” Bandar told CNN’s Larry King about bin Laden. “I thought he was simple and very quiet guy.”

However, immediately after 9/11, Bandar undermined the FBI’s opportunity to learn more about the connections between Osama bin Laden’s relatives and the perpetrators of 9/11 when Bandar arranged for members of the bin Laden family to flee the United States on some of the first planes allowed back into the air – after only cursory interviews with the FBI.

The only part of the 9/11 Commission’s report to be blacked out as “classified” was the section dealing with alleged Saudi financing for al-Qaeda.

Thus, even as Official Washington’s neocons dutifully attack President Obama as Neville Chamberlain for negotiating an interim agreement with Iran to constrain but not eliminate its nuclear program, Prime Minister Netanyahu must decide how far he feels he can go with his new Saudi friends – and just how much of a backlash he might face if he is seen as complicit in a resurgence of al-Qaeda terrorism.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby justdrew » Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:12 pm

bush should be shipped off to a black site and questioned fully...


The Deafness Before the Storm
By KURT EICHENWALD | September 10, 2012

IT was perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history.

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:27 pm

for bush it was LIHOP….for Zakheim ( System Planning Corporation (SPC) International) (Comptroller of the Pentagon) it was MIHOP
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 06, 2013 5:29 pm

What is the Saudi arms deal really about?
Posted By Dov Zakheim Friday, October 22, 2010 - 12:49 PM Share

It is widely believed that the massive $60 billion U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia is directed against Iran. After all, Israel did not object to the deal. As one analyst told China's Xinhua News Agency, Jerusalem, of all places, was simply adhering to the ancient principle of: "My enemy's enemy is my friend."

It is indeed possible that the deal -- which includes up to 84 new F-15s, upgrading of Riyadh's current force of 70 F-15s, and up to 1,000 so-called "bunker buster" bombs -- is meant to enhance the Saudi deterrent against Iran. But that presupposes that Iran will still be moving ahead with its nuclear weapons program in 2015, when the first new F-15s will be delivered to the desert kingdom, but will not yet have actually fielded the bomb. Should Iran already have acquired nuclear weapons together with viable systems for delivering them prior to that date, it is difficult to see how the Saudi purchases would effectively deter Tehran from anything other than a conventional attack on the Saudi Kingdom. On the other hand, should Iran have dropped its nuclear program -- whether as a result of either international pressure or an internal upheaval -- the Saudi purchase would appear to be somewhat beside the point.

A look at the remainder of the Saudi deal indicates that Riyadh has other concerns in mind. The Saudis are also acquiring 190 helicopters. These include 70 Apache Longbows, an upgraded version of the U.S. Army's highly successful attack helicopter which carries, among other weapons, a powerful 30 MM gun and anti-tank missiles. Riyadh is also purchasing 36 AH-6i "Little Bird" light helicopters, which are often used by Special Forces. Finally, the Saudis are buying 72 UH-60 Blackhawks, which are ideal for moving troops into and around combat zones.

Acquisition of these helicopters makes the most sense in the context of a need to prevent incursions from Yemen or to support the Sana'a government's operations against rebellious tribes, such as those that have been directed against the Houthis (who are Zaidis, a branch of Shiite Islam) since 2004. Indeed, so do the F-15s, and were the Houthis or other rebels to operate from underground shelters, so would the bunker busters as well. Finally the Saudi naval modernization program is as much geared to preventing piracy in the Red Sea and seaborne attacks on oil facilities in the Eastern Province as on deterring the Iranian Navy or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's naval forces.

Why would Israel not object to the Saudi purchase of attack systems that could in theory be deployed from Tabuk against the Jewish state? In part because the Israelis do not expect such an attack; in part because they will be receiving the more advanced F-35 the same year that the Saudis begin to take ownership of the F-15s; in part because the Israelis own, and are therefore familiar with, not only F-15s, but most of the systems the Saudis are purchasing. Presumably, the Israel Defense Forces have devised defenses against them, whether through electronic warfare or kinetic means. In addition, however, it is in Israel's interest that the conservative Saudi regime prevent radicals such as the Houthis -- who among their other acts have terrorized Yemen's ancient Jewish community to the point that most of it has now emigrated -- from ever gaining power on the Arabian Peninsula.

Moreover, even if the Israelis do not expect the F-15s to be relevant in terms of stopping the Iranian nuclear program, Israel believes that Tehran does not need five years to build the bomb -- they recognize the psychological impact on the Ayatollahs of their tacit support of the Saudi purchase. The Israelis would be delighted if Tehran's paranoid leaders were to conclude from Jerusalem's passivity in the face of the Saudi deal that Israel and Riyadh are in cahoots against them and that Israel has made a secret arrangement to overfly Saudi airspace in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

There is yet one more reason for Israeli acquiescence to the sale. For more than twenty years -- since Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir quashed American Jewish opposition to the 1988 sale of F-18s to Kuwait -- Israel has been relatively silent in the face of arms sales to the Gulf Arabs. At the time, Shamir concluded that the sale posed no threat to Israel, and his attaché in Washington informed a number of vocal Congressional opponents of the deal that they should reserve their vitriol for other issues. Since then, the Israeli assessment of the impact of such sales on its security has not changed, while its desire to win over the Gulf States has increased over time. Israel wants to establish decent, if not official, relations with the southern Gulf regimes not only to forge a united front against Iran, but also to encourage those states to play a more positive role in the peace process and to increase their financial support of the Palestinian Authority. While Israel has had on-and-off economic relations with several of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Saudi Arabia has not been one of them. Riyadh is the biggest prize and the Israelis are ready to go to great lengths to win it over -- and if that means silence in the face of a massive purchase of American arms, so be it.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection

Postby justdrew » Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:08 pm

somehow I doubt that 10 billion deal is going to result in actual cash payments up front, it's more about subsidizing American defense contractors than anything else. I bet the notorious Import/Export Bank is underwriting the whole thing. Then again, that was a few years ago, I wonder how the contract is going?
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