WP

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- The bin Laden family were granted extraordinary White House privileges to fly out of U.S. airspace following the attacks of Sept. 11th, 2001. Former White House counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke told Vanity Fair the Bush administration decided to allow a group of Saudis to fly out of U.S. airspace just after Sept. 11-- a time when access to the United States was still restricted and required special government approval. According to the magazine's sources, at least four flights with about 140 Saudis, including roughly two-dozen members of the bin Laden family, flew to Saudi Arabia that week without even being interviewed or interrogated by the FBI. Clarke, who headed the counter terrorism security group of the National Security Council, said he does not now recall who initiated the request for approval. He said it was probably either the FBI or the State Department, both of which have denied playing any such role.

Original Tampa Tribune Article from 2001

TAMPA - The twin-engine Lear jet streaked into the afternoon sky, leaving Tampa behind but revealing a glimpse of international intrigue in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America.

The federal government says the flight never took place.

But the two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon their clients out of the state recall the 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly.

In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747 and a trip to their homeland.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Local and federal authorities will say little about the flight.

"It's not in our logs ... it didn't occur," said Chris White, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Atlanta.

For private investigators Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez, the bodyguards on the Lear, it was a trip they can't forget.

Democrats.com about the "Phantom Flight"

Democrats.com -March 2003

The Secret Saudi Flight on 9-13 Could be the Key to the Bush-Saudi-Al Qaeda Connection

By Catherine Arnie

About a month after the September 11th attacks, I read an article in the Tampa Tribune by Kathy Steele entitled "Phantom Flight From Florida." The intriguing report told the tale of a flight out of Florida that allegedly took place on September 13 - a day when ALL civilian air traffic in the United States was grounded.

"This was out of a Tom Clancy movie," according to a retired homicide detective who was hired for the flight. Its mission was to spirit the son of a Saudi prince, the son of a Saudi army commander, and another unidentified Saudi from Florida to Kentucky, because "there was a perceived threat, and the family of the person wanted him home right away."

The "person" in danger was the son of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is no minor figure in the Saudi Royal family. Rather, Prince Sultan is the kingdom's minister of defense, the third-ranking position in the Saudi Government, whose powers exceed those of even America's super-powerful Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez were the two Floridians who were hired to serve as private bodyguards on the flight.

According to the article in the Tampa Tribune, Dan Grossi is a retired Tampa cop who worked in internal affairs and homicide. Perez is a retired FBI man whose experience was in counter-terrorism and bomb-making. Perez now runs a detective agency and the two men provided security for the National Football League at Raymond James Stadium in September of 2001.

The article reported that shortly after the September 11 attack, Lexington police Lt. Mark Barnard received a request from a prominent Saudi Kingdom official for the protection of three young Saudi men in Florida, at least one of whom - Prince Sultan's son - had been studying English at the University of Tampa for three weeks. (Tampa police records listed Sultan Bin Fahad as the individual who specifically requested protection for the three men. That is probably Prince Sultan Bin Fahad, head of the Saudi General Presidency of Youth Welfare. In family-run Saudi Arabia, there is apparently a whole Ministry devoted to keeping Royal youth out of trouble - something the Bush family elders no doubt dream of copying.)

Apparently Barnard then contacted the Tampa police department and two "off-duty" Tampa intelligence detectives were assigned to watch the three Saudis for their protection. At around 11:00 AM on September 13, Dan Grossi received a phone call from the Tampa police detectives who needed help with a problem: escorting the Saudi men they were protecting on a flight to Kentucky.

(much more with links to cited articles)

Grossi and Perez evidently felt they were up to the task, and at 2:30 PM Grossi was contacted by the Tampa Police Department with specific instructions. And by 4:35 PM a plane carrying Grossi, Perez, Prince Sultan's son, the son of an unidentified Saudi military commander, and third unidentified Saudi, was in the air and en route to Kentucky. The private Lear jet flew from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa, where it parked at Raytheon Airport Services, which owns a private hangar on the outskirts of the Tampa International airport.

(Tampa, of course, is home to General Tommy Franks and the Pentagon's Central Command (CentCom), which now rules Afghanistan and Iraq directly, and indirectly rules the entire oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia through its growing network of Halliburton-supplied military bases. Raytheon, of course, is the massive arms manufacturer that supplied many of the high-tech weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tampa is also near Venice FL, where Mad Cow Morning News has exposed numerous secrets about the training of 9-11 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi at shadowy local flight schools. And Tampa is in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush stole the 2000 election for his brother George, and where Jeb issued Executive Order 2001-261 to prepare the FL National Guard for a terrorist attack on 9-7-01.)

...In 1965 William P. Lear Jr. and General Paul Tibbets Jr. joined the company then known as Executive Jet Aviation. In 1986, a subsidiary known as NetJets was created.

...In 1998, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathway, Inc. bought the company for $725 million and is now a major backer of the company now known as Executive Jet. There are now other companies involved in various aspects of Fractional Jet Ownership using the concepts created by Mr. Santulli.

FlightSafety International A major flight training organization, and part of Warren Buffet's empire.

Flight Safety was also selected by Raytheon as its subcontractor providing the Ground Based Training System for the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) used by the US Air Force and navy for primary pilot training.

Great Buffet Quotes

Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.

In 1998 after experiencing NetJets ownership for the prior three years, Warren Buffett and his company Berkshire Hathaway purchased NetJets and its parent company, NetJets Inc.

The Buffet-9/11 Ties

(from a blog)

"...the ExecuJet 956 that tracked Flight 93: It's ironic enough that the very jet that tracked Flight 93 on the morning of September 11th was owned by Warren Buffet, who was at the time securely holed up at Offut Air Base, without having to speculate that ExecuJet 956 actually shot down Flight 93. That's a stretch, but what isn't a stretch, because it is documented in court records (ref: USA vs. Moussouai), is that ExecuJet 956 actually witnessed the fate of Flight 93 on the morning of September 11th..."

Buffet is also part of Mitre Corp. and Mitre is heavily into UAV's (unmanned aerial vehicles).

Warren Buffett was at the same air force base that Bush flew to (apparently Bush intended to fly directly to Offutt, but had to stop for refuelling in Louisiana.

Offutt on 9/11

...On the morning of Sept. 11, (Ann) Tatlock (Fiduciary Trust Co. International) herself had just arrived with a small group of business leaders at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha for a charity event hosted by Warren Buffett. She then heard the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center's north tower.

Fiduciary's offices, spread among the 92nd through 97th floors of the south tower, typically at that time would be filling with the firm's 650 employees. But workers had started making their way to ground level after the first plane struck the neighboring structure.

Moments later, back in Omaha, a television picture flashed on a large screen, and Tatlock witnessed the second plane plowing into the south tower.

"There on the screen, I saw the second plane crash into my office," Tatlock recalled.

Senator Schumer's call: "Investigation into the hasty departures"

NY Times -September 4, 2003

The fact that relatives of Mr. bin Laden and other Saudis had been rushed out of the country became public soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But questions have lingered about the circumstances of their departure, and Mr. Clarke's statements provided the first acknowledgment that the White House had any direct involvement in the plan and that senior administration officials personally signed off on it.

Mr. Clarke first made his remarks about the plan in an article in Vanity Fair due out Thursday, and he expanded on those remarks today in an interview and in Congressional testimony. The White House said today that it had no comment on Mr. Clarke's statements.

The disclosure came just weeks after the classified part of a Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that Saudi Arabia had financial links to the hijackers, and Mr. Clarke's comments are likely to fuel accusations that the United States has gone soft on the Saudis because of diplomatic concerns.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, seized on Mr. Clarke's comments to call on the White House to conduct an investigation into the hasty departures of about 140 Saudis from the United States in the days after the attacks.

Mr. Schumer said in an interview that he suspected that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave, particularly two relatives of Mr. bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups themselves, could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11.

"This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get," Mr. Schumer said. "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed."

Saudi officials could not be reached for comment today, but in the past they have denied accusations linking them to the 19 hijackers, 15 of them from Saudi Arabia.

While F.B.I. officials would not discuss details of the case, they said that in the days immediately after Sept. 11 bureau agents interviewed the adult relatives of Mr. bin Laden, members of one of Saudi Arabia's richest families, before the White House cleared them to leave the country. Mr. bin Laden is said to be estranged from his family, and many of his relatives have renounced his campaign against the United States.

"We did everything that needed to be done," said John Iannarelli, a bureau spokesman. "There's nothing to indicate that any of these people had any information that could have assisted us, and no one was accorded any additional courtesies that wouldn't have been accorded anyone else."

But the Vanity Fair investigation quotes Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the F.B.I., as saying that the departing Saudis "were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."

Mr. Watson could not be reached for comment today.

The article depicts an elaborate but hurried evacuation carried out within a week of the hijackings in which private planes picked up Saudis from 10 cities. Some aviation and bureau officials said they were upset by the operation because the government had not lifted flight restrictions for the general public, but those officials said they lacked the power to stop the evacuation, the article says.

Mr. Clarke, who left the White House in February, said in an interview that he was driven by concern that the Saudis "would be targeted for retribution" by Americans after the hijackings.

Mr. Clarke said he told the bureau to hold anyone it had suspicions about, and the F.B.I. said it did not hold anyone.

Mr. Schumer said he doubted the thoroughness of a rushed review by the bureau, and in a letter to the White House today he said the Saudis appeared to have gotten "a free pass" despite their possible knowledge about the attacks.

Abdullah (WAMY) and Omar Laden on the Planes?

From Paul Thompson's Timeline:

September 11, 1996: An FBI investigation into two relatives of bin Laden, begun in February 1996, is closed. The FBI wanted to learn more about Abdullah bin Laden, "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) - a suspected terrorist organization." (Guardian, 11/7/01)

Abdullah was the US director of WAMY and lived with his brother Omar in Falls Church, Virginia, a town just outside Washington. The coding on the document, marked secret, indicates the case involved espionage, murder, and national security.

WAMY has its offices at 5613 Leesburg Pike. Remarkably, it is later determined that four of the 9/11 hijackers lived at 5913 Leesburg Pike at the same time the two bin Laden brothers were there. WAMY has not been put on a list of terrorist organizations in the US, but it has been banned in Pakistan. (BBC Newsnight, 11/6/01, Guardian, 11/7/01)

The Bosnian government later says a charity with Abdullah bin Laden on its board had channeled money to Chechen guerrillas, something that "is only possible because the Clinton CIA gave the wink and nod to WAMY and other groups who were aiding Bosnian guerrillas when they were fighting Serbia, a US-approved enemy." The investigation into WAMY is only restarted two days after 9/11, and after the bin Laden brothers have left the US. (Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast, 2/03) February 2001 (B): A former CIA anti-terror expert later claims that an allied intelligence agency sees "two of Osama's sisters apparently taking cash to an airport in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), where they are suspected of handing it to a member of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization." This is cited as one of many incidents showing an "interconnectedness" between Osama bin Laden and the rest of his family. (New Yorker, 11/5/01)

February 26, 2001: Bin Laden attends the wedding of his son Mohammad in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Although bin Laden is supposedly long estranged from his family, bin Laden's stepmother, two brothers and sister are also said to have attended, according to the only journalist who was invited. (Reuters, 3/1/01, Sunday Herald, 10/7/01)

July 4-14, 2001: Bin Laden, America's most wanted criminal with a $5 million bounty on his head, supposedly receives lifesaving treatment for renal failure from American surgeon specialist Dr. Callaway at the American hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He is possibly accompanied by al-Qaeda #2 Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri plus several bodyguards. Callaway later refuses to answer any questions on this matter. (Le Figaro, 10/31/01, Agence France-Presse, 11/1/01, London Times, 11/01/01) During his stay, bin Laden is visited by "several members of his family and Saudi personalities," including Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, as well as two CIA officers. (Guardian, 11/1/01)

ed GFP: The original story appeared first on Radio France International 1 by Richard Labevierre ("Terror Dollars", 2000") and was picked up the same day by AFP, Le Figaro (edited by Alexandra Richard), Yahoo Singapore, BBC, intelligenceonline.fr, lemonde.fr., ananova.com, and thisislondon.com
The original source Labevierre was ignored in all following reports.

Mirror of Yahoo Singapore and ThisisLondon.com:

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/bin_laden_met_cia.html

http:///web/2001110300095..._text_id=424130

Greg Palast about WAMY

Workingforchange.com

let’s look at these guys that the FBI wanted to investigate -- the group’s called WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth). The BBC has learned that one of their operatives was the conduit from delivering Osama bin Laden’s Valentine tapes to Al Jazerra TV. And this is a group that has recruited jihadists to take on the war against the infidels.

Up, up, and away with Prince Bandar

Joe Conason's Journal
The truth about how the White House helped the bin Laden family flee the U.S. finally comes out. Will the "liberal" press pay attention?

Americans who want to understand an important aspect of what has gone wrong with the Bush "war on terrorism" must read Craig Unger's stunning investigative story in the October issue of Vanity Fair. He provides a definitive account of how members of the bin Laden family and relatives of the House of Saud were spirited out of the country on private aircraft during the days following the Sept. 11 attacks -- when almost all aviation was prohibited.

Boarding a series of flights that crisscrossed the country, from Florida to Kentucky to Los Angeles, Washington and Boston, they were permitted to leave on orders from the "highest level" of the United States government -- without any real interrogation or investigation by the FBI. As Unger points out, at least two bin Laden male kinsmen had been probed for connections with the U.S. branch of the World Association of Muslim Youth, a suspected terrorist front group.

Why were individuals connected with the prime suspect in the worst crime in American history allowed to leave the country so abruptly? Unger examines the role of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the suave Saudi ambassador and longtime crony of the Bush family, who apparently used his influence to win the release of as many as 140 of his compatriots, including the bin Ladens.

Former National Security Council counterterror chief Richard Clarke says that the decision to let the Saudis leave was made with FBI approval. "I asked [the FBI] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving. I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event -- to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying." But the FBI's spokesman on counterterrorism issues told Unger: "I can say unequivocally that the F.B.I. had no role in facilitating these flights one way or another."

Determining who is telling the truth about the fleeing Saudis isn't easy. With the sort of candor that has become its hallmark, the White House is still denying that any such flights ever occurred. That denial is simply exploded by Unger, who interviewed a former police officer hired to work security on the private jet that took several Saudis from Tampa, Fla., to Lexington, Ky. (where another group of Saudi royals had been buying horses).

With outrage that any American can share, Allan Gerson, an attorney for the 9/11 victim families who are suing the Saudi government and the bin Laden interests, wonders why some obvious questions weren't put to the passengers on those planes before they were released.

"They should have been asked whether they had contacts or knew of any other Saudi contacts with Osama bin Laden," said Gerson. "What did they know about the financing of al-Qaeda? What did they know about the use of charitable institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere as conduits for terrorism financing? Why was the Saudi government not responsive to U.S. pleas in 1999 and 2000 that they stop turning a blind eye to terrorist financing through Saudi banks and charities?" Yet as Dale Watson, the FBI's former counterterrorism chief admits, "They were identified, but they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."

Among the various explanations for this undue leniency, Unger examines certain ties that bind the Bush family to the bin Laden clan and the Saudi hierarchy. He writes: "Vanity Fair has learned that as senior adviser to the Carlyle Group, the gigantic private-equity firm, former president George H. W. Bush, who has long been a close friend of Prince Bandar, has played a key role in raising millions of dollars from Saudis for a Carlyle investment fund."

While Unger acknowledges that there may have been valid reasons of state to allow the Saudis to exit unmolested by law enforcement, he leaves the final comment to John L. Martin, former national security chief in the Justice Department. "What happened on September 11 was a horrific crime. It was an act of war. And the answer is no, this is not any way to go about investigating it."

Unger reveals much, much more -- and we shall see whether the "liberal" American media arouses itself to expand on his findings. So far, the first media outlet to pay any serious attention to the Vanity Fair article was the Edinburgh Evening News. (Yes, the city in Scotland.) But this morning, the New York Times suddenly appears interested, too.

US agents told: Back off bin Ladens

Sydney Morning Herald -Wednesday, November 7, 2001

US special agents were told to back off the bin Laden family and the Saudi royals soon after George Bush became president, although that has all changed since September 11, it was reported today.

And the BBC2's Newsnight program also said the younger George Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, who took over as head of the family after his father Mohammed's death in a plane crash in 1968.

The program said it had secret documents from the FBI investigation into the terror attacks on New York and Washington which showed that despite the myth that Osama is the black sheep of the family, at least two other American-based members of it are suspected of links with a possible terrorist organisation.

The program said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of bin Laden family members living in the US after, and even before, September 11.

A document showed that special agents from the Washington field office were investigating Abdullah, a close relative of Osama, because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organisation, it said. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

The program said it had found where he used to live with another close relative, Omar, also an FBI suspect, in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington. The house was conveniently close to WAMY, it said, and just a couple of blocks down the road was a place listed by four of the alleged hijackers as their address.

The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and insists it is a charity, the program said, yet Pakistan had expelled WAMY "operatives" and India claimed WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir.

The FBI did look into WAMY, but for some reason agents were pulled off the trail, it said.

The program has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis, it said.

The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, Michael Springman, told the program: "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

"People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained there. I complained here in Washington to Main State, to the inspector-general and to Diplomatic Security and I was ignored."

He added: "What I was doing was giving visas to terrorists - recruited by the CIA and Osama bin Laden to come back to the United States for training to be used in the war in Afghanistan against the then Soviets."

The US wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection - so long as America was safe, the program said.

The program said the younger George Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, who took over as head of the family after his father Mohammed's death in a plane crash in 1968.

Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little-known private company which in just a few years of its founding has become one of America's biggest defence contractors, and his father, Bush Senior, is also a paid adviser, the program said.

And it became embarrassing when it was revealed that the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11, it added.

The program said it had been told by a highly-placed source in a US intelligence agency that there had always been "constraints" on investigating Saudis, but under President Bush it had become much worse.

After the elections, the intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from investigating the bin Laden family and the Saudi royals, and that angered field agents, the program added.

The policy was reversed after September 11, it reported.