|
After
years of lobbying
from pressure groups, 28 pages from the 2002 congressional investigation
into 9/11 previously withheld from publication were declassified and released
into the public domain in July
2016. They confirm that two of the 9/11 hijackers received assistance from a Saudi national
called Osama Bassan. The report states that Bassan had 'extensive
ties' to
the Saudi government and that, several years before the attacks, he had received thousands
of dollars directly from Prince Bandar. Bassan's wife also received a monthly $2,000 stipend from Bandar's wife. Prince Bandar was the Saudi government official
who worked to finance
and support the CIA backed jihad of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
During the Bush administration Bandar was an advocate of an attack on Iraq. The Bush administration had secretly begun planning an attack on Iraq well before 9/11,
but at that stage there was no obvious way of gaining public support
for such an illegal act. However, 9/11 sufficiently traumatised the
American public that it was subsequently willing to support an attack on
Iraq, even though it had nothing to do with 9/11. nlpwessex.org |
| ON THIS PAGE |
| 1. 28 Pages On 9/11 Finally Released 2016 - Show Mutiple Links To Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar |
| 2. Who Is Prince Bandar? |
| 3. How Bush Administration Blocked Full Investigation Into Saudi Role In 9/11 |
| 4. Staff Papers Released Years After 9/11 Commission Report Show Further Links To Saudi Arabia |
| 5. Sly Senate Maneuver Blocks Prosecution Of Saudis For Role In 9/11 |
28 Pages Finally Released 2016
Show Multiple Links To Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar
"The House will vote this week on
whether to allow 9/11 survivors and family members of those killed that day to sue
Saudi Arabia in connection with the attacks, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul
Ryan confirmed Wednesday. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act
(JASTA) passed the Senate unanimously in mid-May. President Obama has threatened to
veto the legislation, saying it could open the door for other countries to
allow lawsuits against Americans in courts abroad. But Congress appears to have
enough votes for an override....In July, the
Obama administration finally declassified 28 pages of the report from the 9/11
Commission that pointed to multiple links between the terrorists and associates of
Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, the former longtime ambassador to the United States. The
report also mentions possible conduits of money from the Saudi royal family to Saudis
living in the United States and two of the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego. The documents also
indicate substantial support to California mosques where radical Islamist sentiments
ran high. Families of the 9/11 victims say the
legislation would allow several lawsuits -- consolidated into one case on behalf of 9/11
victims and several insurance companies -- to proceed, as lawyers attempt to prove Saudi
government involvement in the terrorist plot. The bill specifically provides an
exception to sovereign immunity for countries involved in terrorist attacks
inside the United States. Families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon say they've never received an explanation of how
the attacks were financed. They have pursued a lawsuit since 2003 in federal court in
the Southern District of New York seeking to find out. The lengthy legal battle has
stretched out as lawyers have battled over whether the Saudi government has immunity from
prosecution under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 or whether they are
covered by an exception for terrorist acts in the U.S. The latest setback for the 9/11
families came last September in a ruling by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels,
who said the court lacked jurisdiction. Attorneys for the 9/11 families
have said the legislation merely clarifies existing law."
House to vote this week on letting 9/11 families sue Saudis
USA
Today, 7 September 2016
"The 28 pages of
newly declassified material from the 9/11 Commission released Friday by Congress show multiple links to associates of Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, the former longtime ambassador to the United States. The details in the
newly released documents are a mix of tantalizing, but often unconfirmed, tidbits
about the Saudi Arabian ties of some of the 9/11 hijackers. They show possible conduits of
money from the Saudi royal family to Saudis living in the United States and two of the
hijackers in San Diego. The documents also indicate substantial support to California
mosques with a high degree of radical Islamist sentiment.... Osama Bassnan, who the documents identify as
a financial supporter of two of the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego, received money from
Bandar, and Bassnan's wife also got money from
Bandar's wife. "On at least one occasion," the documents show, "Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar's
account. According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the
amount of $15,000. Bassnan's wife also received at least one check directly from
Bandar." Bassnan and Omar al-Bayoumi, another
Saudi living in San Diego, "provided substantial assistance" to two of the
hijackers — Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — the documents
said."
Declassified 9/11 pages show ties to former Saudi ambassador
USA
Today, 15 July 2016
"Brushing aside White House warnings
about national security, Congress moved decisively Wednesday to override a
presidential veto — for the first time in the Obama administration
— of a bill that will allow 9/11 families to sue the Saudi
Arabian government for damages. Supporters say it will give victims of
terrorism their day in court. But opponents, including the White House, warn it will
complicate U.S. relationships abroad, impede national security investigations and open the
floodgates to similar lawsuits by foreigners against the U.S. government. CIA
Director John
Brennan had warned of “grave implications” and Defense Secretary Ashton
Carter said it could be “devastating” to the department and
“undermine” counterterrorism efforts abroad. Sen. Bob
Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
lamented Wednesday that a measure with such potentially far-reaching consequences to U.S.
foreign policy had not even been subject to a hearing in Congress before it sailed through
both chambers. Yet just moments later, he joined his Senate colleagues, who voted
97 to 1 to override Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of
Terrorism Act. The House swiftly followed with a vote of 348 to 77. The
legislation will amend existing law to allow U.S. courts to hear terrorism cases against
foreign states, narrowing the scope of immunity now granted to sovereign foreign actors.
Families of the 9/11 attacks had been stymied for years in their legal attempts to seek
compensation from the Saudi Arabian government. They note that 15 of the 19 hijackers were
Saudi citizens. The United States and the 9/11 Commission investigated possible
links between Saudi Arabia and the Sept. 11 attacks and found no conclusive evidence.
“We are overwhelmingly grateful that Congress did not let us down," said Terry
Strada, national chair of the 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against
Terrorism. "We rejoice in this triumph and look forward to our day in court and a
time when we may finally get more answers regarding who was truly behind the
attacks.""
In a first, Congress rebukes Obama with veto override of 9/11 bill
Los
Angles Times, 28 September 2016
"Last week’s unanimous passage of
a Senate bill making it easier for 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia and other foreign
terror sponsors was widely heralded as a major victory. It’s more of a cruel hoax. It
turns out that just before the vote, Sen. Charles Schumer and other proponents of the
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act stuffed an amendment into the final draft
allowing the attorney general and secretary of state to stop any litigation against the
Saudis in its tracks. Yes, JASTA would remove the statutory restrictions that have
prevented 9/11 families from taking the Saudi kingdom to court. But Schumer helped craft
an entirely new section to the original bill, giving the Justice and State departments the
power to stay court action indefinitely. All they have to do is inform the judge hearing
the case that the US government has engaged with Riyadh in diplomatic talks to resolve
the issue. The quiet, behind-the-scenes watering-down of the controversial bill explains
why it passed without a single Republican or Democratic objection. The White House had
lobbied senators heavily to kill the bill."
Schumer upends 9/11 Saudi suit bill at 11th hour
New
York Post, 24 May 2016
"Saudi Arabia has told the Obama
administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of
dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that
would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.... Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any
role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi
government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the
organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left
open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could
have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002
congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials
living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot. Those conclusions,
contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly...The Senate
bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law
should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill
Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be
signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be
examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits"
Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill
New
York Times, 15 April 2016
"In 1984, when the Reagan
administration sought help with its secret plan to sell arms to Iran to finance the contra
rebels in Nicaragua, Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, met with Prince Bandar, who was the
Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time. The White House made it clear that the Saudis
would 'gain a considerable amount of favor' by cooperating, Mr. McFarlane later recalled. Prince Bandar pledged $1 million per month to
help fund the contras, in recognition of the administration’s past support to the
Saudis. The contributions continued after Congress cut off funding to the contras. By the
end, the Saudis had contributed $32 million, paid through a Cayman Islands bank account.
When the Iran-contra scandal broke, and questions arose about the Saudi role, the kingdom
kept its secrets. Prince Bandar
refused to cooperate with the investigation led by Lawrence
E. Walsh, the independent counsel. In a letter,
the prince declined to testify, explaining that his country’s 'confidences and
commitments, like our friendship, are given not just for the moment but the long run.'
U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels
New
York Times, 23 January 2016
"A former Republican member of the
9/11 commission, breaking dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday
he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a
support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move
quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001
terrorist attack. The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was
Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among
the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an
exoneration of Saudi
Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11. “There was an awful lot
of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those
people worked in the Saudi government,” Lehman said in an interview, suggesting that
the commission may have made a mistake by not stating that explicitly in its final report.
“Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.” He
was critical of a statement released late last month by the former chairman and
vice-chairman of the commission, who urged the Obama administration to be cautious about
releasing the full congressional report on the Saudis and 9/11 – “the
28 pages”, as they are widely known in Washington – because they contained
“raw, unvetted” material that might smear innocent people.... In the interview
Wednesday, Lehman said Kean and Hamilton’s statement that only one Saudi government
employee was “implicated” in supporting the hijackers in California and
elsewhere was “a game of semantics” and that the commission had been aware of at
least five Saudi government officials who were strongly suspected of involvement in the
terrorists’ support network. “They may not have been indicted, but they were
certainly implicated,” he said. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial
evidence.” Although Lehman said he did not believe that the Saudi royal family or the
country’s senior civilian leadership had any role in supporting al-Qaida or the 9/11
plot, he recalled that a focus of the criminal investigation after 9/11 was upon employees
of the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs, which had sponsored Thumairy for his job in Los
Angeles and has long been suspected of ties to extremist groups. He said “the 28
pages”, which were prepared by a special House-Senate committee investigating
pre-9/11 intelligence failures, reviewed much of the same material and ought to be made
public as soon as possible, although possibly with redactions to remove the names of a few
Saudi suspects who were later cleared of any involvement in the terrorist attacks. Lehman
has support among some of the other commissioners, although none have spoken out so
bluntly in criticizing the Saudis. A Democratic commissioner, former congressman Tim
Roemer of Indiana, said he wants the congressional report released to end some of the wild
speculation about what is in the 28 pages and to see if parts of the inquiry should be
reopened. When it comes to the Saudis, he said, “we still haven’t gotten to the
bottom of what happened on 9/11”. Another panel member, speaking on condition of
anonymity for fear of offending the other nine, said the 28 pages should be released even
though they could damage the commission’s legacy – “fairly or
unfairly” – by suggesting lines of investigation involving the Saudi government
that were pursued by Congress but never adequately explored by the commission....The
commissioner said the renewed public debate could force a spotlight on a mostly unknown
chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the
panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented
in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials –
especially at lower levels of the government – were part of an al-Qaida support
network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US. In
fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis, between the staff and the
commission’s hard-charging executive director, University of Virginia historian
Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of
state, Condoleezza Rice, after leaving the commission. The staff included experienced
investigators from the FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA, as well as the
congressional staffer who was the principal author of the 28 pages. Zelikow fired a
staffer, who had repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after
she obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described
an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two investigators
who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to the commission’s
offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment that some of the most
compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being edited out of the report or was
being pushed to tiny, barely readable footnotes and endnotes. The staff protests were
mostly overruled....Last month Barack
Obama, returning from a tense state visit to Saudi Arabia, disclosed the
administration was nearing a decision on whether to declassify some or all of the 28
pages, which have been held under lock and key in a secure room beneath the Capitol since
they were written in 2002. Just days after the president’s comments however, his CIA
director, John Brennan, announced that he opposed the release of the congressional report,
saying it contained inaccurate material that might lead to unfair allegations that Saudi
Arabia was tied to 9/11. In their
joint statement last month, Kean and Hamilton suggested they agreed with Brennan and
that there might be danger in releasing the full 28 pages. The congressional report was
“based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI”, they
said. “The 28 pages, therefore, are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes,
which are generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules.” If any part of the
congressional report is made public, they said, it should be redacted “to protect the
identities of anyone who has been ruled out by authorities as having any connection to the
9/11 plot”.Zelikow, the commission’s executive director, told NBC News last
month that the 28 pages “provide no further answers about the 9/11 attacks that are
not already included in the 9/11 commission report”. Making them public “will
only make the red herring glow redder”.... Lehman and another commissioner, former
Democratic senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, filed affidavits last year in support of a
lawsuit brought against the Saudi government by the families of 9/11 victims.
“Significant questions remain unanswered concerning possible involvement of Saudi
government institutions and actors,” Kerrey said. Lehman agreed: “Contrary to
the argument advocated by the Kingdom, the 9/11 commission did not exonerate Saudi Arabia
of culpability for the events of 11 September 2001 or the financing of al-Qaida.” He
said he was “deeply troubled” by the evidence gathered about a hijackers’
support network in California. In an interview last week, congressman Roemer, the
Democratic commissioner, suggested a compromise in releasing the 28 pages. He said that,
unlike Kean and Hamilton, he was eager to see the full congressional report declassified
and made public, although the 28 pages should be released alongside a list of pertinent
excerpts of the 9/11 commission’s final report. “That would show what
allegations were and were not proven, so that innocent people are not unfairly
maligned,” he said. “It would also show there are issues raised in the 28 pages
about the Saudis that are still unresolved to this day.”"
Saudi officials were 'supporting' 9/11 hijackers, commission member says
Guardian,
12 May 2016
Staff Papers Released Years After 9/11 Commission Report Show Further Links To Saudi Arabia
"An interrogation report prepared
after the questioning of the Saudi diplomat [Fahad al-Thumairy] in February 2004 is
among the most tantalizing of a sheaf of newly declassified documents from the files of
the staff of the 9/11 commission. The files, which were quietly released by the National
Archives over the last 18 months and have drawn little public scrutiny until now, offer a
detailed chronology of how the commission’s staff investigated allegations of Saudi
government involvement in 9/11, including how the panel’s investigators flew to Saudi
Arabia to go face-to-face with some of the Saudis believed to have been part of the
hijackers’ support network on American soil. The newly declassified documents may
also help resolve the lingering mystery about what is hidden in a long-classified
congressional report about ties between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks. A former
commission staff member said in an interview last week that the material in the newly
released files largely duplicates information from “the 28 pages”, as they are
commonly known in Washington, and then goes well beyond it. Speaking on condition of
anonymity for fear of angering his former colleagues, he said he was annoyed that so much
attention has been focused on “the 28 pages” when, in fact, the commission had
full access to the congressional report and used it as a roadmap to gather new evidence
and witness accounts that demonstrated sinister connections between low-level Saudi
government officials and a terrorist support network in southern California. “We had
lots of new material,” the former staffer said. Another,
earlier memo from the commission’s files, unearthed last month by the website
28pages.org, which is pressing for release of the congressional report, lists the names of
dozens of Saudis and others who had come under suspicion for possible involvement with the
hijackers, including at least two Saudi naval officers. The memo, dated June 2003, noted
the concern of the staff that earlier US investigations of the Saudi ties to terrorism had
been hindered by “political, economic or other considerations”. Barack Obama has
said he is nearing a decision on whether to declassify the 28 pages, a move that has led
to the first serious public split among the 9/11 commissioners since they issued a final
report in 2004. The commission’s former chairman and vice chairman have urged caution
in releasing the congressional report, suggesting it could do damage to US-Saudi relations
and smear innocent people, while several of the other commissions have called for the 28
pages to be made public, saying the report could reveal leads about the Saudis that still
need to be pursued. Earlier this week, a Republican commissioner, former navy secretary
John F Lehman, said there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of
a support network for the 9/11 hijackers – an allegation, congressional officials
have confirmed, that is addressed in detail in the 28 pages. In an interview Thursday,
Lehman said that while he had not meant to his comments to suggest any deep disagreements
among the 10 commissioners about their investigation, he stood by his view – directly
contradicting the commission’s chairman and vice-chairman – that “there was
an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some
of those people worked in the Saudi government”. “The 9/11 investigation was
terminated before all the relevant leads were able to be investigated,” he said on
Thursday. “I believe these leads should be vigorously pursued. I further believe that
the relevant 28 pages from the congressional report should be released, redacting only the
names of individuals and certain leads that have been proven false.”"
Declassified documents detail 9/11 commission's inquiry into Saudi Arabia
Guardian,
13 May 2016
Sly Senate Manouver Blocks Prosecution Of Saudis For Role In 9/11
"Last week’s unanimous passage of
a Senate bill making it easier for 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia and other foreign
terror sponsors was widely heralded as a major victory. It’s more of a cruel hoax. It
turns out that just before the vote, Sen. Charles Schumer and other proponents of the
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act stuffed an amendment into the final draft
allowing the attorney general and secretary of state to stop any litigation against the
Saudis in its tracks. Yes, JASTA would remove the statutory restrictions that have
prevented 9/11 families from taking the Saudi kingdom to court. But Schumer helped craft
an entirely new section to the original bill, giving the Justice and State departments the
power to stay court action indefinitely. All they have to do is inform the judge hearing
the case that the US government has engaged with Riyadh in diplomatic talks to resolve
the issue. The quiet, behind-the-scenes watering-down of the controversial bill explains
why it passed without a single Republican or Democratic objection. The White House had
lobbied senators heavily to kill the bill."
Schumer upends 9/11 Saudi suit bill at 11th hour
New
York Post, 24 May 2016
NLPWESSEX,
natural law publishing |