http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45115.htm
US Releases Saudi Documents: 9/11 Coverup Exposed
The report focuses in part on the role of one Omar al-Bayoumi, who was described to the FBI as a Saudi intelligence officer, and, according to FBI files, “provided substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000.”
By Bill Van Auken
July 15, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS" - The
public release Friday afternoon of a section of the Congressional
report on the 9/11 attacks, which had been kept secret for 13 years, has
provided fresh evidence of a deliberate coverup of the role played, not
only by the Saudi government, but US intelligence agencies themselves,
in facilitating the attacks and then covering up their real roots.
The
28-page segment from the report issued by the “Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks
of September 11, 2001” provides abundant and damning evidence of
extensive Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers—15 out of 19 of whom were
Saudi nationals—in the period leading up to the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon that claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
The
Obama White House, the CIA, the Saudi monarchy and the corporate media
have all tried to portray the documents—released on a Friday afternoon
to assure minimal exposure—as somehow exonerating the Saudi regime of
any culpability in the 9/11 attacks.
“This
information does not change the assessment of the US government that
there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi
individuals funded al-Qaeda,” Josh Earnest, the White House press
secretary said Friday, boasting that the main significance of their
release was its proof of the Obama administration’s commitment to
“transparency.”
In
reality, the 28 pages have been kept under lock and key since 2002,
with only members of Congress allowed to read them, in a Capitol Hill
basement vault, while prohibited from taking notes, bringing members of
their staff or breathing a word of their content.
The
Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it,
maintained this secrecy for several reasons. First, it was concerned
that the documents would jeopardize its relations with Saudi Arabia,
which, after Israel, is Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, a
partner in bloody operations from Afghanistan to Syria to Yemen, and the
world’s biggest buyer of American arms.
Even
more importantly, it was concerned that the 28 pages would further
expose the abject criminality of the US government’s role in
facilitating the attacks of 9/11 and then lying about their source and
exploiting them to justify savage wars of aggression, first against
Afghanistan and then against Iraq. These wars have claimed over a
million lives. The false narrative created around the September 11
attacks remains the ideological pillar of the US campaign of global
militarism conducted in the name of a “war on terror.”
Media
reports on the 28 pages invariably refer to the absence of a “smoking
gun,” which presumably would be tantamount to an order signed by the
Saudi king to attack New York and Washington. The evidence is described
as “inconclusive.” One can only imagine what would have been the
response if, in place of the word “Saudi,” the documents referred to
Iraqi, Syrian or Iranian actions. The same evidence would have been
proclaimed an airtight case for war.
Among
those who were involved in preparing the report, John Lehman, the
former secretary of the navy, directly contradicted the official
response to the release of the previously censored section. “There was
an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the
hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he
said. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi
Arabia.”
Similarly,
former Florida Senator Bob Graham, who chaired the committee that
carried out the investigation, suggested that the information released
Friday was only the beginning. “I think of this almost as the 28 pages
are sort of the cork in the wine bottle. And once it’s out, hopefully
the rest of the wine itself will start to pour out,” he said.
What
clearly emerges from the newly-released document, which is titled
“Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National
Security Matters,” is that there were multiple indications of funding
and support for the 9/11 hijackers and Al Qaeda in general, but that
investigations were either shut down or never initiated because of the
close ties between Washington and the Saudi monarchy, and between US and
Saudi intelligence.
“While
in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in
contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who
may be connected to the Saudi government,” the document begins. It cites
FBI sources as indicating that some of these individuals were “Saudi
intelligence officers.”
It
goes on to indicate that FBI and CIA investigations of these links were
initiated solely in response to the Congressional inquiry itself. “[I]t
was only after September 11 that the US government began to aggressively
investigate this issue,” the report states. “Prior to September 11th,
the FBI apparently did not focus investigative sources on [redacted]
Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an
American ‘ally.’”The report focuses in part on the role of one Omar al-Bayoumi, who was described to the FBI as a Saudi intelligence officer, and, according to FBI files, “provided substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000.”
The
inquiry report deals with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar only from after they
arrived in California, and says nothing about the circumstances under
which they were allowed to enter the country in the first place. Both
were under CIA surveillance while attending an Al Qaeda planning meeting
in 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and placed on a “watch list” for FBI
monitoring if they came to the United States. Nonetheless, the two men
were allowed to enter the United States on January 15, 2000, landing at
Los Angeles International Airport, eventually going to San Diego. From
then on, they were permitted to operate freely, attending flight
training school in preparation for their role as pilots of hijacked
planes on September 11, 2001.
Al-Bayoumi,
the report establishes, “received support from a Saudi company
affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense,” drawing a paycheck for a
no-show job. The report states that the company also had ties to Al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
According
to the report, al-Bayoumi had previously worked for the Saudi Civil
Aviation Association and, in the period leading up to 9/11, was “in
frequent contact with the Emir at the Saudi Defense Ministry responsible
for air traffic control.” Phone records showed him calling Saudi
government agencies 100 times between January and May of 2000.
FBI
documents also established that the $465 in “allowances” that
al-Bayoumi received through the Saudi military contractor, jumped to
over $3,700 shortly after the arrival of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. During
this period, al-Bayoumi initially allowed the two future hijackers to
stay in his apartment before finding them their own place—with an
informant of the San Diego FBI—cosigning their lease and advancing them a
deposit and the first month’s rent.
The
report states that FBI investigations following 9/11 indicated that
al-Bayoumi had “some ties to terrorist elements.” His wife, meanwhile,
was receiving a $1,200 a month stipend from Princess Haifa Bint Sultan,
the wife of Prince Bandar, then the Saudi ambassador to the US and later
head of Saudi intelligence.
Also
named in the document as a likely Saudi intelligence agent is one Osama
Bassnan, who lived across the street from the two hijackers in San
Diego and was in telephone contact with al-Bayoumi several times a day
during this period. He apparently placed the two in contact with a Saudi
commercial airline pilot for discussions on “learning to fly Boeing jet
aircraft,” according to an FBI report. Bassnan’s wife also received a
monthly stipend from Princess Haifa, the Saudi ambassador’s wife, to the
tune of $2,000 a month. As well, the FBI found one $15,000 check
written by Bandar himself in 1998 to Bassnan. The report states that FBI
information indicated that Bassnan was “an extremist and supporter of
Usama Bin Ladin,” who spoke of the Al Qaeda leader “as if he were god.”
Appearing
before the Congressional inquiry in October 2002, FBI Executive
Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Pasquale D’Amuro reacted with
undisguised cynicism and contempt when asked about the payments from the
Saudi ambassador’s wife to the wives of the two reputed intelligence
agents involved with the 9/11 hijackers.
“She
gives money to a lot of different groups and people from around the
world,” he said. “We’ve been able to uncover a number of these... but
maybe if we can discover that she gives to 20 different radical groups,
well, gee, maybe there’s a pattern here.” Spoken like a man who believes
he is above the law in defense of a figure that he clearly sees as
untouchable.
Among
other material in the report was the recounting of an FBI interrogation
of Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi interior ministry official, who
stayed in the same Virginia hotel as three of the hijackers the night
before the 9/11 attacks. While he claimed not to know the hijackers, the
FBI agents “believed he was being deceptive.”
According
to the report, al-Hussayen “feigned a seizure” and was released to a
hospital, which he left several days later, catching a flight back to
Saudi Arabia without any further questioning. During the same period,
nearly 1,200 people, with no links to the attacks, were being rounded up
and held incommunicado on little more evidence than that they were Arab
or Muslim.
Also
in the report was the fact that a phone book belonging to Abu Zubaydah,
the Al Qaeda operative who is still held at Guantanamo after extensive
torture at the hands of the CIA, was found to contain the unlisted
numbers of companies that managed and provide security for Saudi
ambassador Prince Bandar’s residence in Colorado, as well as that of a
bodyguard at the Saudi embassy who, the report states “some have alleged
may be a [words redacted].”
Redactions
of this sort recur throughout the document in relation to individual
Saudis, suggesting their membership in some sort of secret service whose
name must remain unmentioned. This is only part of what the secret
material still conceals. Members of the inquiry’s staff reportedly
protested angrily over the failure to clearly present the evidence of
Saudi involvement, leading to the firing of at least one staffer.
If
the government is determined to continue to shield such Saudi
connections, it is undoubtedly because they would expose the involvement
of the US intelligence agencies themselves in the events of 9/11.
If
such whitewashes are required, it is because elements within the US
government were aware that Al Qaeda was preparing an operation on US
soil, turned a blind eye to it and even facilitated it because they knew
it could be used as a pretext to carry out longstanding plans for
aggressive war in the Middle East.
The
release of even the limited material on the Saudi-US-9/11 connection is
a devastating exposure of the criminals in the US government, from
George W. Bush on down, and the lies they employed to engineer wars that
have devastated the lives of millions.
These
new facts demand a thorough, impartial and international investigation,
as well as the indictment and arrest of top level officials, both
American and Saudi. Only a powerful intervention of the international
working class, on the basis of a socialist program, will see these war
criminals brought to justice.
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