Bush-Bin Laden links

PV Vivekanand

The Sept.11 saga has been given a dramatically new twist by a report that four airplanes carrying Saudi nationals, including several members of the mainstream Bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the United States two days after the aerial attacks in New York and Washington when US airspace was closed for passenger traffic and flights required special permission from the authorities.
The report, carried by the American magazine Vanity Fair, raises questions about the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudis, and Saudi investments in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior counsellor and former president George HW Bush is senior adviser.
The implication in the article is that the Bush administration, influenced by personal connections as well as the diplomatic clout that the Saudi ambassador to Washington enjoyed, allowed members of the Saudi ruling family and others close to them as well as members of the mainstream Bin Laden family -- which had disowned Osama Bin Laden -- to leave the US. They appeared to be in a hurry to the US following the Sept.11 attacks when it was slowly emerging that at least some of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The question is raised in the article itself:
"How was it possible that, just as President Bush declared a no-holds-barred global war on terror that would send hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and just as Osama Bin Laden became public enemy number one and the target of a worldwide manhunt, the White House would expedite the departure of so many potential witnesses, incluidng two dozen relatives of the man behind the attack itself?"
However, there is no suggestion that any of those who left had anything to do with the Sept.11 attacks, but that they might had had an inkling that they could face questioning by American authorities in view of their association, even by acquaintance, with any of the hijackers.
At the same time, two cousins of Osama Bin Laden had a record of affiliation with a Muslim organisation in the US; again, there is no suggestion or evidence that this group had any links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept.11 attack.
The article appearing in this week's Vanity Fair quotes former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke as saying that the Bush administration allowed the flights carrying up to 140 Saudis to leave the US without being interviewed or interrogated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Every passenger plane leaving the US after Sept.11 had to have special permission to take off, but in the case of the four planes were given special clearance by top officials, and the FBI was not involved at all, says the article.
Vanity Fair said the White House had declined comment on the report, but it quoted a a source insidethe White House as saying that there no evidence to suggest that the White House ever authorised such flights.
According to Vanity Fair write Craig Unger, private detective and former Florida police officer Dan Grossi had received a call on Sept.13 asking him to escort Saudi students on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky, even though private planes were still grounded in the aftermath of the attacks.
"I was told it would take White House approval," Unger quotes Grossi as saying. However, t when the plane's pilot showed up, they took off.
In the report, Clarke says he chaired a crisis group — the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council — at the White House andits meering were attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "came and went."
"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke is quoted as saying.
"My role was to say that it can't happen until the FBI approves it. And so the FBI. was asked — we had a live connection to the FBI — and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone . . okay.. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, 'Fine, let it happen. . . . I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event-to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying."
Clarke, who is now working for the private sector, could not recall who had asked him for approval but said it was probably the FBI or the State Department.
Both the FBI and the State Department denied that the request came from them.
Vanity Fair quoted a State Department source as implying that Saudi Arabian Ambasasdor to the US Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, one of the most influential foreign diplomats in Washington, could have obtained permission for the flights from authorities higher than the State Department, meaning the White House.
"The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done," the source told the magazine. According to Saudi Arabia's director of information, Nail Al Jubeir, the flights had been requested by the Saudis and were authorised "at the highest level of the US government."

Following is a part of a a verbatim summary of the report provided by Vanity Fair.

Quote:

After the September 11 attacks, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, the House of Saud, which rules Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laden family.
By coincidence, even before the attacks, Bandar had been scheduled to meet President Bush in the White House on Sept.13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process.
The meeting took place as planned.
Nail Al Jubeir tells Unger that he does not know if Bandar and the president discussed getting the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudis tried to get their planes to leave before the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them, Unger reports. "I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar's office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane," an FBI agent says.
"Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that the plane was not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it."
Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, tells Unger that while the Saudis were identified, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
The bureau has declined to release the Saudis' identities.
The wealthy Bin Laden family long ago broke with their terrorist brother, Osama, but Unger reports that some members of the family have had links to militant Islam.
Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden had been under FBI investigation for their involvement with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which has published writings by one of Osama bin Laden's principal intellectual influences.
According to documents obtained by the Public Education Center in Washington, the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on Sept.19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was under way. A security official who served under George W. Bush tells Unger,
"WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There's no doubt about it."
The Saudis' planes took off from or landed in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, Lexington, Kentucky-and Newark and Boston, both of which had been points of origin for the Sept.11 attacks.
"We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan airport, tells Unger, "and here we were seeing an evacuation of the Bin Ladens! . . .
"I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington. This was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come."
"I asked [the FBI] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving," Clarke tells Unger.
Clarke assumed the FBI had vetted the bin Ladens prior to Sept. 11. "I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second-guess the FBI."
Prince Bandar has had a 20-year friendship with former president George HW Bush.
Unger questions whether the long-standing Bush-Saudi relationship could have influenced the administration. The latest in a line of business links between the Bush family and the Saudis involves the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm for which George HW Bush is a senior advisor and former secretary of state James Baker III is a senior counsellor.
The Carlyle Group has received $80 million in Saudi investment, Unger reports, including $2 million from the Bin Ladens which was returned to them after Sept.11.
In 1995, Abdulrahman and Sultan Bin Mahfouz invested "in the neighbourhood of $30 million" in the Carlyle Group, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky.
Abdulrahman Bin Mafouz was a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as "an Al Qaeda front." (Carlyle categorically denies that the Bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever been investors.) Clarke believes the decision to let the Saudis go was made because "there's a realisation that we have to work with the government we've got in Saudi Arabia. The alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to be more hostile-in fact, extremely hostile-to the US."
Unquote...