WASHINGTON -- Two of the
Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States
that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and
FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob
Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers
"would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia,
and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida
Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters,"
obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of
that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the
congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the
administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and
Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on
Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion of Afghanistan,
that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial
to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to
prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq
war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a
diversion that would hinder the fight against Al Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with
Representative Porter Goss. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House
blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two
hijackers.
Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry
concluded that two Saudis in the San
Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave
significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi
government.
Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for
Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he
helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers
-- find apartments and make contacts in San
Diego, before they began pilot training.
Saudi officials have denied ties to the hijackers or Al
Qaeda plots to attack the United
States.”
Hmm, why would ANYONE hinder a federal investigation into who possibly funded the 'al-qaeda' 'hijackers'? Hmmmm....(Oh yea, cause they were in on it..)
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
"In this explosive, co
February 5, 2007 - 22:04 ET by ThoughtPolice"In this explosive, controversial, and profoundly alarming
insider's report, Senator Bob Graham reveals faults in America's
national security network severe enough to raise fundamental questions
about the competence and honesty of public officials in the CIA, the
FBI, and the White House.
For ten years, Senator
Graham served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he had access
to some of the nation's most closely guarded
secrets. Following the
attacks of September 11, 2001, Graham co-chaired a historic joint
House-Senate inquiry into the intelligence community's failures. From
that investigation and his own personal fact-finding, Graham discovered
disturbing evidence of terrorist activity and a web of
complicity: At one point, a terrorist
support network conducted some of its operations through Saudi Arabia's
U.S. embassy and a funding chain for terrorism led to the
Saudi royal family.
In February 2002, only four
months after combat began in Afghanistan, the Bush administration
ordered General Tommy Franks to move vital military resources out of
Afghanistan for an operation against Iraq despite Franks's
privately stated belief that there was a job to finish in Afghanistan,
and that the war on terrorism should focus next on terrorist targets in
Somalia and Yemen. Throughout 2002, President Bush
directed the FBI to limit its investigations of Saudi Arabia, which
supported some and possibly all of the September 11
hijackers. The White House was so uncooperative
with the bipartisan inquiry that its behavior bore all the hallmarks of
a cover-up. The FBI had an informant who was
extremely close to two of the September 11 hijackers, and actually
housed one of them, yet the existence of this informant and the scope
of his contacts with the hijackers were covered
up. There were twelve instances when the September
11 plot could have been discovered and potentially
foiled. Days after 9/11, U.S. authorities allowed
some Saudis to fly, despite a complete civil aviation ban, after which
the government expedited the departure of more than one hundred Saudis
from the United States. Foreign leaders throughout
the Middle East warned President Bush of exactly what would happen in a
postwar Iraq, and those warnings went either ignored or
unheeded. As a result of his Senate work,
Graham has become convinced that the attacks of September 11 could have
been avoided, and that the Bush administration's war on terrorism has
failed to address the immediate danger posed by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,
and Hamas in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. His book is a
disturbing reminder that at the highest levels of national security,
now more than ever, intelligence matters."
Ouch...Score one for me...
http://www.amazon.co...
(link from first post..so theres no whining..
http://www.boston.co...)