{"id":256952,"date":"2016-07-20T11:15:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T11:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=256952"},"modified":"2017-09-11T01:13:15","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T00:13:15","slug":"911-bushs-guilt-28-pages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/911-bushs-guilt-28-pages\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11: Bush’s Guilt, And the ’28 Pages’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday July15th, as the national newsmedia were either on vacation or preparing for the opening of the Trump National Convention on Monday the 18th, the long-awaited release of the \u2018missing 28 pages\u2019 from the U.S. Senate\u2019s 9\/11 report (\u201cDECEMBER 2002: JOINT INQUIRY INTO INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES BEFORE AND AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001\u201d) occurred. The official title of this document is \u201cPART FOUR \u2014 FINDING, DISCUSSION AND NARRATIVE REGARDING CERTAIN SENSITIVE NATIONAL SECURITY MATTERS\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and it constitutes pages 6-34 of a pdf. (Some writers mistakenly call it \u201c29 pages.\u201d [I correct that statement; Robert parry just now pointed out to me, it really is<\/i> 29 pages: all of the previous references to it as \u201cthe missing 28 pages\u201d had gotten the count wrong. Thanks, Robert!])<\/span><\/p>\n

It \u201cwas kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and remained secret under Bush\u2019s successor Barack Obama<\/span><\/a>, until that Friday night late in Obama\u2019s Second Administration, right before a week of Republican National Convention news would be dominating the news (along with any racial incidents, which would be sure to distract the public even more from any indication of Bush\u2019s guilt). The pdf was of a picture-file so as to be non-searchable by journalists and thus slow to interpret, and thus would impede press-coverage of it. The file was also of a very degraded picture of the pages, so as to make the reading of it even more uninviting and difficult. Well, that was a skillful news-release-and-coverup operation! The Federal Government had plenty of time to do this right, but they evidently had plenty of incentive to do it wrong. They\u2019re not incompetent; the reasonable explanation is something worse than that. (After all: this information has been hidden from the public for all of the 13+ years since that report was published without the 29 pages at the end of 2002.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A typical \u2018news\u2019 report about the matter was NBC\u2019s, which was headlined \u201cSecret 28 Pages of 9\/11 Report Released, Hold No Proof of Saudi Link\u201d<\/span><\/a> and which ended: \u201cAmerican officials repeatedly have stated their conclusion: There was none.\u201d That\u2019s stenographic \u2018journalism\u2019, like (in 2002 and 2003) about \u2018Saddam\u2019s WMD\u2019<\/span><\/a>: it\u2019s \u2018journalism\u2019 in which, whatever<\/i> your government says, is simply reported, as being (or as if it were) the truth<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What these 29 long-suppressed pages revealed was well summarized by one succinct reader who wrote: \u201cThe Inquiry discloses that there is a very direct chain of evidence about financing and logistics \u2026 [that] goes from the Saudi Royal family (Amb. Bandar’s wife and Bandar’s checking account) and Saudi consulate employees (al Thumiari) to the agent handlers (Basnan and al Bayoumi) to some of the 9\/11 hijackers (Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi).\u201d<\/span><\/a> In other words: Prince Bandar bin-Sultan al-Saud, known in Washington as \u201cBandar Bush\u201d (for his closeness to the Bush family), and who served at that time as Saudi Arabia\u2019s Ambassador to the United States, paid tens of thousands of dollars to Saudi Arabia\u2019s \u201chandlers\u201d who were directing two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Also, one of Bandar\u2019s subordinates at the Embassy, named al-Thumiari, was likewise paying the person who was paying and managing those two jihadists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report said: \u201cFBI files suggest that al-Bayoumi provided substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. \u2026 According to an October 14, 2002 FBI document, al-Bayoumi has \u2018extensive ties to the Saudi Government\u2019. \u2026 According to the FBI, al-Bayoumi was in frequent contact with the Emir at the Ministry of Defense, responsible for air traffic control. \u2026 Al-Bayoumi was receiving money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense. \u2026 Al-Bayoumi was known to have access to large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that he did not appear to hold a job. \u2026 Al-Bayoumi\u2019s pay increased during the time that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were in the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, an FBI agent testified on 9 October 2002 regarding al-Bayoumi, and said Bayoumi: \u201cacted like a Saudi intelligence officer, in my opinion. And if he was involved with the hijackers, which it looks like he was, if he signed leases, if he provided some sort of financing \u2026 then I would say that there\u2019s a clear possibility that there might be a connection between Saudi intelligence and UBL [Usama bin Laden].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover: \u201cThe FBI has now confirmed that only Osama Bassnan\u2019s wife received money directly from Prince Bandar\u2019s wife, but that al-Bayoumi\u2019s wife attempted to deposit three of the checks from Prince Bandar\u2019s wife, which were payable to Bassnan\u2019s wife, into her own accounts. \u2026 Bassnan was a very close associate of Omar al-Bayoumi\u2019s and was in telephone contact with al-Bayoumi several times a day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore: \u201cBassnan\u2019s wife received a monthly stipend from Princess Haifa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And: \u201cOn at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar\u2019s account. According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan\u2019s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar \u2026 for $10,000. \u2026 FBI Executive Assistant Director D\u2019Amuro commented on this financing: \u2018I believe that we do have money going from Bandar\u2019s wife, $2,000 a month up to about $64,000.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Also: \u201cOn March 28, 2002, U.S. and coalition forces retrieved the telephone book of Abu Zubayda, whom the U.S. Government has identified as a senior al-Qa\u2019ida operational coordinator. According to an FBI document, \u2018a review of toll records has linked [to] ASPCOL Corporation in Aspen, Colorado. \u2026 ASPCOL is the umbrella corporation that manages the affairs of the Colorado residence of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador. \u2026 The U.S. Government also located another Virginia number at an Usama bin Laden safehouse in Pakistan \u2026 [where a person was] interviewed by the FBI in June 2002. He could not explain why his number ended up at a safehouse in Pakistan, but stated that he regularly provides services to a couple who are personal assistants to Prince Bandar.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

This has to be seen in the context of George W. Bush\u2019s very close and longstanding personal friendship with Prince Bandar, and also in the context of Bandar\u2019s career.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bandar has long been involved, both officially and unofficially, in the intelligence operations of the Saud family (which own Saudi Arabia). During October 2005 through January 2015, he served as secretary general of Saudi Arabia\u2019s National Security Council, and he also was director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. Furthermore the just-released report asserts: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe FBI also received reports from individuals in the Muslim community alleging that Bassnan might be a Saudi intelligence agent. According to a CIA memo, Basnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi Government officials. He and his wife have received financial support from the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and his wife. \u2026 A CIA report also indicates that Bassnan traveled to Houston in 2002 and \u2026 that during that trip a member of the Saudi royal family provided Bassnan with a significant amount of cash. \u2026 FBI information indicates that Bassnan is an extremist and a supporter of Usama bin Laden.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding Shaykh al-Thumairy, he was \u201can accredited diplomat at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and one of the \u2018imams\u2019 at the King Fahd Mosque \u2026 built in 1998 from funding provided by Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince Abdulaziz. The mosque \u2026 is widely recognized for its anti-Western views.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The 29 pages also include lots more, but those facts give at least some solid indications of the links that Prince Bandar had to 9\/11.<\/span><\/p>\n

And other FBI offices than in San Diego were basically not even covered in the 29 pages; this was a rush-job by a Senate Committee, and with enormous resistance from the White House<\/span><\/a>, which did everything they could to block the investigators.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore: none of this information is as solid as the sworn court-testimony of the captured former bagman for al-Qaeda, their bookkeeper who personally collected each one of the million-dollar cash donations to the organization and named many donors, including Prince Bandar, as having been among the people from whom he picked up those suitcases full of cash<\/span><\/a>. He said of their donations: \u201cIt was crucial. I mean, without the money of the \u2014 of the Saudi you will have nothing.\u201d The authors of the Senate investigation report, never got any wind of this, because that man was in a U.S. prison and held incommunicado until that court-case in October 2014. But it was virtually the entire Saud family \u2014 not merely Bandar \u2014 who funded 9\/11.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: we know that Bandar \u201cBush\u201d was practically like a brother to George W. Bush, but what other indications do we have of GWB\u2019s guilt in the planning of the 9\/11 attacks?<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all: if he wasn\u2019t involved in the attack\u2019s planning, then he was grossly incompetent and uncaring, to the point of criminal negilgence for the numerous attempts that the CIA had made to warn GWB that such at attack was being planned and would occur soon \u2014 that he simply ignored those warnings. Criminal negligence, however, isn\u2019t the same as being a traitor. That\u2019s far more serious, and it would entail Bush\u2019s conscious desire for such an attack to occur. Such evidence does exist. Here it is:<\/span><\/p>\n

Researcher Chris Whipple headlined at Politico, on 12 November 2015, \u201c\u2018The Attacks Will Be Spectacular\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he reported:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.\u201d The CIA\u2019s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA\u2019s counterterrorism center, \u201cit was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.\u201d \u201cThere were real plots being manifested,\u201d Cofer\u2019s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly in such detail until now\u2014or been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, my partners Jules and Gedeon Naudet and I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called \u201cthe Blue Sky paper\u201d to Bush\u2019s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat\u2014\u201cgetting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.\u201d \u201cAnd the word back,\u201d says Tenet, \u201c\u2018was \u2018we\u2019re not quite ready to consider this. We don\u2019t want the clock to start ticking.\u2019\u201d (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they\u2019d been warned.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Five days later, I wrote an article interpreting that, titled \u201cPolitico Reports Bush Knew 2001 Terror-Attack Was Imminent and Wanted It\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Readers here are referred to that, for the continuation of the case here.<\/span><\/p>\n

For additional information on the bonding between the Saudi aristocracy and the U.S. aristocracy, see this<\/span><\/a> and this<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s important to understand in order to be able to understand why Obama helped to set up the 21 August 2013 Syrian sarin attack<\/span><\/a> to be blamed on Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Russia<\/span><\/a>. The U.S. is allied with the Saud family, against Russia; and Syria is allied with Russia and refuses to allow pipelines for gas from Qatar and oil from Saudi Arabia through Syria to replace gas and oil that Russia has been selling to the EU. (Like RFK Jr. properly headlined on 25 February 2016, \u201cSyria: Another Pipeline War\u201d<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s why the Sauds want Assad dead.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On Friday July15th, as the national newsmedia were either on vacation or preparing for the opening of the Trump National Convention on Monday the 18th, the long-awaited release of the \u2018missing 28 pages\u2019 from the U.S. Senate\u2019s 9\/11 report (\u201cDECEMBER 2002: JOINT INQUIRY INTO INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES BEFORE AND […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":256953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,1036,27,32,96,535,698,804,524,1143,20344,754,92,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-256952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-bush","12":"tag-cia","13":"tag-cover-up","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-hillary-clinton","16":"tag-politics-2","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-saudi-arabia","19":"tag-sauds","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-warfare","23":"tag-white-house","24":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}