Bob Graham: Saudi-911 Ties will remain classified

Evidence on Saudi ties to 9/11 attacks to remain secret

By TERENCE J. KIVLAN

Photos: Prince Turki Al-Faisal (ex-Saudi Intelligence until August 2001),
Khalid bin Mahfouz (Brother-In-Law of Bin Laden), Prince Bandar Bin Sultan

Decision to bar information from congressional report is ripped
by lawyer for Island plaintiffs in $1 trillion suit

WASHINGTON -- Evidence of Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will not be released to the public in an upcoming congressional report, according to former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham.

The portion of the House and Senate congressional intelligence committees' report addressing financial and other assistance given Sept. 11 hijackers by foreign governments will remain secret, Graham told CNN yesterday in an interview.

"The chapter that covers all that has been maintained as classified" at the insistence of the White House, said the Florida senator, who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Graham has been a leading critic of war against Iraq and the Bush administration's homeland security policies.

"It will be very shrouded coverage," said Graham, in response to a question on what the report showed about any connections between the Saudi royal family and al-Qaida.

Lawyers handling a $1 trillion lawsuit accusing some Saudis of complicity in the suicide hijackings expressed outrage at the White House's refusal to allow the release of any information that could affect the case.

There are over 4,000 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including 250 Staten Islanders, all survivors of Sept. 11 victims.

"It is shocking. It's irresponsible," said John D'Amato, whose West Brighton law firm Russo, Scamardella and D'Amato has been coordinating the lawsuit on the Island. "It defeats the whole purpose of the investigation, which was not only to identify the hijackers but where their support was coming from."

Release of the material on the Saudis was "critical to our lawsuit" and "also in the best interest of the country," D'Amato said.

The lawsuit alleges that 200 rich Saudis -- including several members of the royal family, banks and businesses -- gave money to Islamic charities that funneled cash into al-Qaida in recent years.

Graham added that "unless there is a change at the White House between now and the release day of this report, the American people will again be denied access to information [which], in my judgment, they deserve to have."

The report of the congressional panels' yearlong investigation of intelligence agencies and the events of Sept. 11 could be released later this month.

Attorney Jack Cordray of Charleston, S.C., a chief investigator for the plaintiffs, charged that the White House effort to suppress the information was consistent with its record of seeking to protect the Saudis.

"It is not surprising, given the administration's behavior of stonewalling and covering up for the Saudis," said Cordray.

Sources say what is included in the report is the already publicized revelation that some of the charitable contributions made by the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, ended up in the pockets of two of the 19 hijackers.

The intelligence committees issued several interim reports and an abbreviated final report last year. They concluded that, although the CIA and FBI missed important clues to the attacks, information they received was not specific enough to have enabled the agencies to stop the attacks.

For the last six months, the committees and the administration have been negotiating how much classified information in the full report should be released to the public.

Terence J. Kivlan is the Washington correspondent for the Advance. He may be reached at terence.kivlan@newhouse.com.

Prince Turki al Faisal Al Saud (from 911 Skeptics Unite-the encyclopedia)
========================================================
Former head of the Saudi Intelligence Service (->), who was replaced 10 days prior to Sep11th with Prince Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, who accompanied Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz on his official trips overseas.

Al Faisal became then Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Faisal is connected to Unocal (->) through the Saudi Arabian Delta oil company.
On September 5th, 2001 he visited Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri, "to whom he also conveyed messages from the Saudi leadership concerning the latest developments in the Middle East".

On September 8th, 2001 al Faisal assigned to implement an "arab duty-free zone". The proposed duty-free zone covered Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. A final meeting was already scheduled for September 12-13th.

Source:
saudiembassy.net

Turki al Faisal is primary target in one of many 911victim- lawsuits (->) to have been one of the sponsors and founders of the Sep11th attack.

On 8 November 2001, in a rare television interview with Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), Prince Turki Al-Faisal described how "Crown Prince Abdullah sent a letter to President George W Bush before 11 September, in which he stated that relations between the two countries were at a crossroads."

Fifteen of the 19 suspects believed responsible for the attacks on the US are reported to have come from Saudi Arabia.

Source:
ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/560/re5.htm

Indeed, as the CIA confirmed on October 20th 2002,
"Al Qaida is supported by 12 financiers, most of them Saudis"
http://www.worldtribune.com/

As Ron Motley, one of the attorneys confirmed, Faisal participated in the facilitation of the funding of "Al Qaeda":

Motleys law company "spoke with senior Taliban officials who were in the room when he indeed did facilitate the transfer of large sums of money directly to al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
And the people who gave us these sworn statements were in the room when it occurred. And these were senior Taliban, former Taliban officials."
CNN TRANSCRIPTS/0211/25/

On December 11th, 2002, while mentioning the lawsuit, Sen. Bob Graham (->), D-Miami Lakes, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the vice chairman, said the information on Saudi Arabia should be made public to inform citizens about a continued source of support for anti-American terror groups.

Source:
tampatrib.com/

Prince Saudi Turki al Faisal has a long tradition of friendship with the US government and US Congress members.

One of his friends, Bin Laden�s cousin Sheikh Suhail Ibn Mustahil Ibn Salim , by 1979, together with James R. Bath (->) and Khaled bin Mafhuz (->), had become a business partner of former Texas Governor George W. Bush, in the family's Zapata Oil and Arbusto Ltd.

Bin Laden's family had invested in the Carlyle Group (->Blackstone), specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies, in which George Bush Sr. holds the position of Consultant.
According to business magazine Forbes, the father of Khaled bin Mafhuz (->BCCI, ->Harken), who has the 251 fortune of the world, estimated in thousand 900 million dollars, had founded the main Saudi bank, the Commercial National Bank, that created diverse companies in collaboration with the Sico, Swiss society of the Bin Laden Group.
The sister of Mahfouz was married to Osama bin Laden.

In December 2002, it was revealed, that Mahfouz' main business partner Yassin al-Kadi (->) was the secret owner of US-computer company Ptech (->),  among their customers are Applied Materials, Booz Allen Hamilton (->), which is run by former CIA director James Woolsey (->), FAA (->), FBI, IBM Global Services, IRS, The MITRE Corporation (->), MetLife, Motorola, NATO, NAVAIR, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sprint or the US Air Force.

Kadi was accused by the FBI to be a financial supporter of Bin Laden, but put their knowledge on Ptech on hold since October 2001.
The same policy happened to Bin Laden Inc.

Immediately after the US Election in 2000, the intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from investigating the bin Laden family, who was in connection with Saudi Arabia.

The Bin Laden Group, together with Carlyle, held stocks in the BioPharmacy company Bioport (->), which was co-founded by former Bin Laden's business partner  Fuad-el Hibri from Intervac LLC (ex-Porton Down, ->DynPort) and Admiral William Crowe (ex-CIA).

El-Hibri once worked as a merger and acquisitions manager for the Rockefeller-linked Citigroup in New York and arranged various deals for the Bin Laden Family, at that time close friends to Saudi Arabia.  
Bioport is distributing Anthrax-vaccines with the help of Avant Immunootherapeutics Inc., a contractor of Dynport Vaccine Company LLC, a joint venture between Dyncorp(->) and Porton Down.

Prince Turki Al Faisal had confirmed meetings with the Bin Laden Group and Osama bin Laden himself, several times in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan before he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994.

In July 1998, as the lawsuit said, Al Faisal met Taliban leaders in Kandahar, Afghanistan and reached agreement on fresh aid from Riyad.

"Prince Turki also promised to provide oil and generous financial assistance to both the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After the meeting, 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing Saudi Arabia license plates.

islamicsupremecouncil (Cache)

The Saudi Intelligence is one of the contractors of British Aerospace (BAe), which is in business with Saleh Bin Laden.


In 2002, John Weston resigned from BAe Systems.
There are speulations around, that this had to do with bribery.

In the meantime BAe is under control by Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
In April 2002, Insiders of BAe leaked a document to Cryptome (->), which proved that "there has been considerable reporting elsewhere alleging that the former Head of Saudi Intelligence, Turqi Al Faisal, was a major conduit of material and financial support to Osama, and that indeed that Osama was sent to Afghanistan essentially as an agent of Saudi Intelligence."
http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.htm
http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.zip


Al-Faisal met Bin Laden in June 2001 in a hospital in Dubai, together with CIA agent Larry Mitchell, as reported by Radio France International 1, frenchintelligenceOnline.com and the Guardian UK.

Guardian
Detnews

During an increased crisis between Washington and Saudi Arabia on January 12th 2002,  al-Faisal met with Senator and current democratic candidate for US president, John Kerry (->) and members of a delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, headed by Congressman David Price.

On January 17th, 2002 he met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns.
In February 2002, Faisal visited Washington, DC, to attend a series of lectures and discussion groups on Saudi-U.S. relations. The eight-person delegation, which included three female university professors, attended events sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS ->), the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, the Middle East Institute and Middle East Insight magazine.
www.saudiembassy.net

When the Lawsuit against Saudi Arabia started in August 2002, George Bush decided to meet Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar Bin Sultan on his ranch.
Not much was revealed on the content, officially it was described as a meeting on the "middle east crisis".

Cross-Investigation by Lupo-de-Mare and FreedomFiles (GlobalResearch.ca)

New Chairman of 9/11 Commission (Tom Kean) has business ties with Osama's Brother-In-Law (Khaled Bin Mahfouz)

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printed from Bob Graham: Saudi-911 Ties will remain classified on 2004-04-30 11:45:41