A Major Intelligence Insider Points to Saudi Arabia as a ‘Co-Conspirator to 9/11’ and Raises Critical Questions About the Role of the Bush Administration
Many people turn off their ears and close their eyes when someone brings up a conspiracy around the 9/11 attacks. But, in a four part interview by Paul Jay of The Real News an issue is raised by a mainstream member of the U.S. intelligence committee that deserves investigation. Jay interviews former Florida Senator Bob Graham about his work as the co-chair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that investigated intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.
Senator Graham is very much an insider in the U.S. intelligence community. He served for 10 years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including as its Chairman. After leaving office he served as chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Graham also served as cochair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. And he’s a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the CIA External Advisory Board.
The investigation into 9/11 intelligence failures and the subsequent cover-up of Saudi involvement by the Bush administration led Senator Graham to question his life-long reverence of presidential authority. Senator Bob Graham, who wrote a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror? In that book he said fairly strong things about Saudi Arabia. Senator Graham also wrote a novel “Keys to the Kingdom” which tells the story of 9/11 as fiction. In the interview, Senator Graham says he wrote the novel “out of frustration that much of what I knew had occurred had not been made available to the American people.”
A major item that has raised questions in Senator Graham’s mind is that the inquiry’s final report included a 28-page chapter describing the Saudi connection to 9/11, but it was completely redacted by U.S. intelligence agencies. Reportedly those pages, which even 12 years later have still not been made public, named Saudi government officials who provided the funding for the 9/11 attacks. This, and other facts, leads Senator Graham to describe Saudi Arabia as “essentially a co-conspirator in 9/11…” He also believes that knowledge of this “would change the way in which, particularly in the current milieu of events in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is being viewed” by the U.S. public.
Saudi Arabia is an historic ally of the United States, perhaps its most important ally in the region. President Obama has made massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia worth $60 billion over ten years, and recently sped up the first $30 billion of the deal. Saudi Arabia has put significant pressure on the Obama administration in recent months to militarily intervene in Syria, and had also attempted to derail recent U.S.-Iran rapprochement.
In addition to the redacted 28 pages other facts pointed to by Senator Graham include:
– Fifteen of the 19 people on the flights that crashed on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. Senator Graham reports, his co-chair and the c0-chairs of the 9/11 Commission all agree that it is “implausible” that this operation could have been completed by these 19 without outside support. The missing 28 pages describe some of the external support received by the 9/11 attackers.
– At the request of Prince Bandar, a chartered plane flew from Lexington, Kentucky, back to the Middle East with 144 persons who had not been pre-screened, interviewed, or in any meaningful manner debriefed in terms of what they knew about 9/11. This seems to have been approved directly by President Bush as other agencies deny approving the flight. Prince Bandar, who was then serving as the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, DC was very close to President Bush and regularly meeting with him. The Bush family friendship with the Saudi Royal Family goes back to President George W. Bush’s grandfather.
– Senator Graham describes protection of Saudis throughout the government down to Customs officers and gives an example of one Customs officer in Florida who got into trouble because he stopped a Saudi from entering the country. This Saudi national is suspected of being “the 20th hijacker who would have filled out the ranks of the five people on each of the four planes.”
– The failure of anyone to interview an elderly Saudi who lived in San Diego who was the landlord of two of the hijackers. When Senator Graham tried to interview him for the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 he was blocked by the FBI as it turned out this man worked for FBI as Senator Graham says he “was paid by the FBI to allegedly oversee the actions of young Saudis.”
– Senator Graham points out in his book that there were a dozen opportunities for the administration to act that could have prevented the attacks.
– Senator Graham also points to the August 2011 Daily Briefing he received that quite specifically described bin Laden’s plans to attack the United States. Not only was their no reaction to this specific intelligence when there were multiple steps that could have been taken, but this also seems to have been specifically covered up as the the SEIB (Senior Executive Intelligence Brief) which goes to a thousand or so top national security people in the government, did not contain the information.
Senator Graham urges a new investigation into the 9/11 attack. As to what would be investigated he says “the basic questions are: was there one or more entities that were assisting the 19 hijackers? Or were they in fact acting alone? Since most of the questions about support have focused on the Saudis–specifically, what do we know or can we learn about the extent of Saudi involvement? Was it limited to San Diego? Or was it more broadcast in terms of its impact? And then why would the Saudis have taken this action? . . . And then finally, why did the United States go to such lengths to disguise, to conceal the Saudi involvement or the involvement of any other outside force to assist the 19 hijackers? What was the U.S. interest in withholding this from the American people?
At the prompting of Paul Jay he agrees that another area of questions would be: “whether President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney knew something might be coming and didn’t do anything about it, in fact may have actually taken action in the sense of creating a culture of not wanting to know?” Graham makes the point that “You don’t have everybody moving in the same direction without there being a head coach somewhere who was giving them instructions as to where he wants them to move.”
Part 1: Investigating the Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disilliusionment
Part 2: Revealing the 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo the Entire US-Saudi Alliance
Part 3: Why Would Saudi Arabia Support the 9/11 Conspirators, Why Would the US Gov. Cover it Up?
Part 4: The 9/11 Conspiracy: Did Bush/Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know?