Saudi Arabia & 9/11


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.

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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


Who Is Prince Bandar?

"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


How Bush Administration Blocked Full Investigation Into Saudi Role In 9/11

"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



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