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9/11
REVISITED
Was Saudi Arabia
involved?
By Paul Church
At 9:37 Eastern Daylight Time on September
11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into
the western side of the Pentagon, killing all 59
passengers and 125 others in the building. News of
the crash went global within minutes; yet another
symbol of American power was ablaze. For the few
still struggling to believe that the United States
was under attack, doubt evaporated like the bodies
of the many dead.
Conspiracists have
puzzled for a decade over the failure to intercept
the aircraft - or indeed, take even the elementary
step of phoning the Pentagon to warn them of the
approach. But only recently has wider attention
been paid to the failure of the Central
Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) Bin Laden unit to
tell anyone that "muscle" hijackers, Khalid
al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were in the country.
The chairman of the 9/11 Commission,
Thomas Keane, is now on record [1] as calling
this "one of the most troubling aspects of our
entire report". How is it that, despite having
known for several months about al-Midhar and
al-Hazmi, nobody at Alec Station saw fit to
mention them to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), the counter-terrorism policy board in
Washington, Immigration or the Defense Department?
The Bin Laden Issue Station - codenamed
Alec by insiders such as US Army Lieutenant
Colonel Anthony Shaffer - was the CIA unit
dedicated to reporting on al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden and militants in Afghanistan. It was
this unit that had called on authorities in
Malaysia to monitor the Kuala Lumpur "terror
summit" at which plans for 9/11 were probably
finalized. Both al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were at
that meeting.
Accounts differ as to
exactly when the CIA became aware of the
hijackers' presence in America. But specific
orders were issued not to share the information:
Doug Miller, an FBI agent loaned to the Bin Laden
unit, was among those who received the
instructions. In his book Pretext for War,
author James Bamford quotes another FBI agent
loaned to Alec: "[T]hey didn't want the bureau
meddling in their business - that's why they
didn't tell ... that's why September 11
happened."
Author Lawrence Wright has
speculated that, so desperate was the CIA to get a
source inside al-Qaeda, the agency shielded the
aspiring terrorists while it tried to recruit
them. In his book The Looming Tower, Wright
also suggests a more serious possibility: lacking
any domestic jurisdiction, the agency colluded
with Saudi Arabian intelligence to keep their own
fingerprints off events. According to Wright, this
was the view of a team of FBI investigators known
as Squad I-49.
In an interview for the
documentary Who Is Richard Blee?, former
counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke was another
insider to hint at possible Saudi involvement.
Sensationally, Clarke also accused Department of Central Intelligence head George Tenet of
personally withholding evidence from Washington.
Filmmakers John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski
managed to identify two key analysts involved in
burying the evidence. Despite legal threats from
the agency [2], the film is now available as a
podcast.
Backtrack to January 2003: Prince
Bandar bin Sultan is head of the Saudi Embassy in
Washington. Bandar was the man at the center of
the Al-Yamamah arms deal, a corruption scandal
involving the exchange of arms for crude oil with
Britain. A White House insider since he arrived in
Washington nearly two decades before, Bandar's
close ties with the Bush family are common
knowledge. Less widely known is that in January
2003, the Saudi Prince sat with vice president
Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
General Richard Myers discussing US strategy for
the invasion of Iraq.
In his book Plan
of Attack, investigative journalist Bob
Woodward claimed that when Bandar was handed a map
labeled "Top Secret Noforn" in the vice
president's office, not even the secretary of
state had been informed that his country would be
at war. Colin Powell has denied this, but the
incident serves to illustrate the prince's
extraordinary access to the inner workings of
government.
All the more shocking, then, that
between 1998 and 2002, up to US$73,000 in cashier
cheques was funneled by Bandar's wife Haifa
- who once described the elder Bushes as like "my
mother and father" - to two Californian families
known to have bankrolled al-Midhar and al-Hazmi.
The very same would-be terrorists protected by the
CIA.
Princess Haifa sent regular monthly
payments of between $2,000 and $3,500 to Majeda
Dweikat, wife of Osama Basnan, believed by various
investigators to be a spy for the Saudi
government. Many of the cheques were signed over
to Manal Bajadr, wife of Omar al-Bayoumi, himself
suspected of covertly working for the kingdom.
The Basnans, the al-Bayoumis and the two
9/11 hijackers once shared the same apartment
block in San Diego. It was al-Bayoumi who greeted
the killers when they first arrived in America,
and provided them, among other assistance, with an
apartment and social security cards. He even
helped the men enroll at flight schools in
Florida.
When al-Bayoumi moved to England
just days before the attacks, his apartment was
raided by Scotland Yard. Beneath the floorboards
were discovered the phone numbers of several
officials at the Saudi Embassy.
Bandar and
his wife deny any links to terrorism, but both
former co-chairs of the US Senate Intelligence
Committee, Richard Shelby and Bob Graham, think
otherwise. They claim the FBI refused to allow the
committee to interview investigators who had
followed the money from the embassy. Other sources
allege that the 9/11 Commission similarly failed
to fully investigate leads, partly because
commissioner Phillip Zelikow removed or relegated
to footnotes any findings which cast doubt on the
Saudis. A 28-page section of the Congressional Joint Inquiry report exploring
possible foreign government involvement remains
classified.
Then there is the suppressed
testimony of Special Agent Steven Butler,
described by officials familiar with his account
as "explosive". [3] Butler had been monitoring a
flow of Saudi money to the would-be hijackers.
After he testified, staff director for the 9/11
Committee Eleanor Hill sent a memo to the Justice
Department detailing Butler's allegations. When
reporters quizzed the Justice Department about the
content of Butler's testimony, they were told it
was classified.
If possible Saudi Arabian
involvement in 9/11 raised eyebrows at the Justice
Department, what would they have made of
mysterious but little publicized meetings between
the Saudi ambassador and George Tenet? In his book
State of War, author James Risen recounts
how Tenet "set the tone for the CIA's Saudi
relationship by relying heavily on developing
close relationships with top Saudi officials,
including Prince Bandar bin Sultan ..."
Around once a month, Tenet would slip away
to Bandar's estate in McLean, Virginia, for talks
so secretive he refused to tell officers working
under him what they were discussing. Colleagues
would complain that it was difficult for them to
tell what deals were being made with the Saudis.
Were al-Midhar or al-Hazmi ever mentioned?
"Bandar and Tenet had a very close
relationship," confirmed one CIA officer.
The frantic rush to get Saudi Arabian
nationals - including members of the Bin Laden
family - out of America in the days after the 2001
attacks led to public outrage, and was featured in
Michael Moore's seminal but flawed documentary,
Fahrenheit 911. Less was made of a return
trip by Crown Prince Abdullah, then de facto ruler
of Saudi Arabia, in 2002. The Crown Prince, Prince
Saud al-Faisal and Prince Bandar bin Sultan were
scheduled to meet president George W Bush, Dick
Cheney, Colin Powell and national security advisor
Condoleezza Rice at the president's ranch in
Texas.
No fewer than eight airliners
arrived from Saudi Arabia, and as the planes
landed, US intelligence learned that two members
of the royal entourage were on a terrorist
watchlist. The next day, Osama Basnan reported his
passport stolen to Houston police - proving he was
in Texas the same day as the crown prince. Were
the wanted men on the planes Basnan and
al-Bayoumi?
According to the Wall Street
Journal, the FBI planned to "storm the plane and
pull those guys off" until, evidently fearing an
international incident, the State Department
intervened.
Notes
1. Insiders
voice doubts about CIA's 9/11 story Salon,
October 14, 2011.
2. See CIA's
Maneuver: A Case of Bluffing? Buying Time? Or
Something More? September 13, 2011.
3. The
road to Riyadh US News, November 29, 2002.
Paul Church is an independent
journalist reporting on geopolitics, warfare and
counter-terrorism.
(Copyright 2012
Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales,
syndication and republishing.)
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