Nbadan
12-13-2007, 05:30 PM
This keeps coming up time and time again, but don't expect the M$M to treat these revelations as anything more than a moonbat conspiracy theory...
Senator Bob Graham -- Bush Covered Up Saudi Involvement in 9/11
Your investigation in Congress focused on a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, who had provided extensive assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they lived in San Diego. You say al-Bayoumi was apparently a covert agent of the Saudi government, and from that you conclude there was official Saudi support for the plot. Yet the independent 9/11 commission came to a different conclusion. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, has said his investigation had more access to information than yours - including the opportunity to interview al-Bayoumi. And the commission concluded he had nothing to do with the attacks, that his contacts with the hijackers were coincidental.
Let me say that what we know about this comes primarily from FBI and CIA reports that were in the file in San Diego. And in those files, FBI agents referred to Bayoumi as being a Saudi Arabian agent or Saudi Arabian spy. In the summer of 2002, a CIA agent filed a report that said it was "incontrovertible" that terrorists were receiving assistance, financial and otherwise, from Saudis in San Diego. No. 2: Bayoumi was supposed to be working for a firm that was a subcontractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority. Yet he never showed up for work. His boss tried to fire him, and he received a letter from the Saudi civil aviation authority demanding that he be retained on their payroll despite the fact he wasn't performing any services. And the subcontracting company that employed Bayoumi was owned by a Saudi national who, according to documents seized in Bosnia, was an early financial backer of al-Qaida. Now, that's rather suspicious.
Also suspicious is the number of telephone conversations between Bayoumi and Saudi government representatives. It was a very substantial number that remains classified.
.....
Why do you think the White House is so intent on keeping that information from the public?
I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.
In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee's attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI's protective custody and could not be located without the bureau's cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?
We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn't want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.
Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to Porter Goss and me, saying, "The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source." What that tells me is the FBI wasn't acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.
Salon (http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/08/graham)
The whole terra tape debate seems to be a smoke-screen to throw cold water on the burning hot theory that the real reason the WH had the torture tapes destroyed is because the terra-ists kept implicating Saudi's and Pakistanis in the 911 attacks...
Senator Bob Graham -- Bush Covered Up Saudi Involvement in 9/11
Your investigation in Congress focused on a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, who had provided extensive assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they lived in San Diego. You say al-Bayoumi was apparently a covert agent of the Saudi government, and from that you conclude there was official Saudi support for the plot. Yet the independent 9/11 commission came to a different conclusion. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, has said his investigation had more access to information than yours - including the opportunity to interview al-Bayoumi. And the commission concluded he had nothing to do with the attacks, that his contacts with the hijackers were coincidental.
Let me say that what we know about this comes primarily from FBI and CIA reports that were in the file in San Diego. And in those files, FBI agents referred to Bayoumi as being a Saudi Arabian agent or Saudi Arabian spy. In the summer of 2002, a CIA agent filed a report that said it was "incontrovertible" that terrorists were receiving assistance, financial and otherwise, from Saudis in San Diego. No. 2: Bayoumi was supposed to be working for a firm that was a subcontractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority. Yet he never showed up for work. His boss tried to fire him, and he received a letter from the Saudi civil aviation authority demanding that he be retained on their payroll despite the fact he wasn't performing any services. And the subcontracting company that employed Bayoumi was owned by a Saudi national who, according to documents seized in Bosnia, was an early financial backer of al-Qaida. Now, that's rather suspicious.
Also suspicious is the number of telephone conversations between Bayoumi and Saudi government representatives. It was a very substantial number that remains classified.
.....
Why do you think the White House is so intent on keeping that information from the public?
I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.
In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee's attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI's protective custody and could not be located without the bureau's cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?
We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn't want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.
Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to Porter Goss and me, saying, "The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source." What that tells me is the FBI wasn't acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.
Salon (http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/08/graham)
The whole terra tape debate seems to be a smoke-screen to throw cold water on the burning hot theory that the real reason the WH had the torture tapes destroyed is because the terra-ists kept implicating Saudi's and Pakistanis in the 911 attacks...