Thursday, September 29, 2016

BOMBSHELL! CONGRESS REJECTS OBAMA VETO OF 911 BILL

Saudi Arabia said that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudis to be held responsible in American courts for the 9/11 attacks. And then there are the 28 pages missing from the 911 enquiry. 


UPDATE: Pelosi gave a statement that Congress rejecting Obama veto has nothing to do with him, but the reality is that this is a massive chink in his authority. The Democrats are in rebellion against him in a big way, even if they say this is a vote for the families of the 911 victims rather than a vote against Obama. He's a lame duck. This is also a historic vote for another reason: it clearly marks the new reality that the US is no longer prepared to cover for the Saudis no matter what.
Congress on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected President Obama’s veto of a bipartisan bill letting families of Sept. 11 victims sue the Saudi Arabian government, in the first successful veto override of Obama’s presidency. Marking a significant defeat for the White House, the House ensured the bill will become law after voting 348-77 to override Wednesday afternoon. This followed a 97-1 vote hours earlier in the Senate. Despite last-ditch warnings from the Obama administration that the legislation could hurt national security and was “badly misguided,” lawmakers dismissed the concerns. "This bill is about respecting the voices and rights of American victims," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on the Senate floor moments before Wednesday's vote in that chamber, pushed back hard on Saudi government objections to the legislation. “It’s very simple. If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear,” Schumer said.  (More)



July 16, 2016

28 PAGES FROM 9/11 ENQUIRY: SAUDIS HELPED TERRORISTS




May 13, 2016 Alex Jones talks with investigator Les Jamieson why the elites fear the release of the 28 pages. Report of the Joint Inquiry into 9/11 (PDF). Missing 28 pgs (PDF).

(...) FBI files show Saudi agent Omar al-Bayoumi provided “substantial assistance” to Saudi hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. Hazmi was the leader of the cell that attacked the Pentagon, while Mihdhar was one of that cell’s muscle hijackers. The two even stayed at Bayoumi’s apartment, working out in his gym. At the same time he was aiding the hijackers, Bayoumi was getting large salary increases from a Saudi defense front company tied to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, where he worked as a ghost employee. Another alleged Saudi intelligence officer who handled the hijackers, Osama Bassnan, worked closely with Bayoumi.

According to a CIA memo, cited by the now-uncensored 28-page section of the 9/11 report, “Bassnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi government officials.” More alarming, “he and his wife have received financial support from the Saudi ambassador to the United States and his wife.” That would be Prince Bandar, who was promoted to Saudi intelligence minister after 9/11.

The same report says Bassnan, described as a “supporter of Osama bin Laden,” also got “a significant amount of cash” from another “member of the Saudi Royal Family.” FBI documents and a CIA memo further indicate that the hijackers had contact with Shayk Fahad al-Thumairy, then a Saudi consular official in Los Angeles. Records show the accredited Saudi diplomat had dozens of phone conversations and at least one meeting with Bayoumi in advance of the hijackers’ arrival. (...)

A Saudi interior ministry official stayed at the same hotel in Herndon, Va., with Hazmi and other Pentagon cell hijackers on the night before they hijacked the plane that departed that fateful Sept. 11, 2001, morning from nearby Dulles airport. FBI agents felt Saleh al-Hussayen lied about not meeting with or even knowing the hijackers, but when they tried to re-interview him, it was too late — he had been spirited out of the country along with dozens of other Saudi VIP suspects at Bandar’s request, and with the White House’s permission.

Speaking of Bandar, it turns out that an unlisted phone number connected to the good prince’s Aspen chalet was found in the phone book of senior al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida when he was captured in Pakistan in 2002. Zubaida also just happened to have a contact number for Bandar’s bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy.

Mind you, these stomach-turning revelations are gleaned from merely summaries of FBI case files and CIA memos. There is much rawer intel that remains classified about the Saudi government’s role in 9/11. The treachery may still be worse than we know. And it may be ongoing. As the 28 pages warn: “Saudi government officials in the United States may have other ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.” (More)



July 15, 2016

US RELEASES SECRET 28 PAGES FROM 9/11 REPORT

The U.S. government on Friday released a once-classified chapter from a congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that some lawmakers suggested raise questions of Saudi involvement. The documents were posted Friday by the House intelligence committee. (PDF) Former President George W. Bush originally classified the chapter to protect intelligence sources and methods and perhaps to avoid upsetting Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally. President Obama later ordered a declassification review of the chapter, which Congress released on Friday. Subsequent investigations have found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks. But lawmakers and relatives of victims, who don't believe all Saudi links to the attackers were thoroughly investigated, pushed for more than 13 years to get the “28 pages” released, from the joint committee’s 838-page report. (More)




June 4, 2016

THE 41 YEAR OLD US-SAUDI SECRET DEAL

How a legendary bond trader from Salomon Brothers brokered a do-or-die deal that reshaped U.S.-Saudi relations for generations. The deal explaines why Saudi involvement in 9/11 was covered up.
In July 1974 William Simon, newly appointed U.S. Treasury secretary, and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, stepped onto an 8 a.m. flight from Andrews Air Force Base. That year, an embargo by OPEC’s Arab nations—payback for U.S. military aid to the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War—quadrupled oil prices. Inflation soared, the stock market crashed, and the U.S. economy was in a tailspin. The mission: neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon and find a way to persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America’s widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. Failure would not only jeopardize America’s financial health but could also give the Soviet Union an opening to make further inroads into the Arab world. (...) Simon, better than anyone else, understood the appeal of U.S. government debt and how to sell the Saudis on the idea that America was the safest place to park their petrodollars. (...) The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending (...) there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country’s Treasury purchases stay “strictly secret,” according to a diplomatic cable obtained by Bloomberg from the National Archives database. (More)


  
May 23, 2016

ISIS: THE SAUDI RELIGIOUS-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on. Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it. The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns. (More)




Saudis furious over the U.S. Senate Bill 

The Saudi press is still furious over the U.S. Senate’s unanimous vote approving a bill that allows the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. This time, the London-based Al-Hayat daily has claimed that the U.S. planned the attacks on the World Trade Center in order to create a global war on terror. The article, written by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari and translated by MEMRI, claims that American threats to expose documents that prove Saudi involvement in the attacks are part of a long-standing U.S. policy that he calls “victory by means of archives.” (More)



May 17, 2016

GLOBALISTS FEAR RELEASE OF 28 PGS OF 9/11 REPORT

The U.S. Treasury has finally revealed Saudi Arabia's holdings of U.S. debt - after four decades of keeping it secret. And it's big. The oil-rich nation was holding $116.8 billion in U.S. Treasuries as of March 2016, the Treasury Department disclosed this week. That ended its long-standing practice of grouping the amount with other nations ever since Treasury began providing records on foreign ownership in 1974. Saudi Arabia's holdings weren't broken out separately, but grouped in with more than a dozen other nations mainly members of OPEC. Investors for the first time can see how the oil-rich nation ranks in terms of owning U.S. government securities. Saudi Arabia lands as the 13th largest foreign holder of U.S. treasuries just behind India at $118.9 billion and ahead of Singapore with $112.7 billion. Saudi Arabia's holdings dipped 2.5% from the record $119.8 billion the country held in February. (More)

May 17, 2016


SENATE BILL ENABLES SUING SAUDIS FOR 9/11




9/11 victims may be closer to being able to sue Saudi Arabia. (More)

The Senate today passed a bill that allows 911 victims to go after Saudi involvement in the infamous attack. While hopeful, the bill still faces a vote in the House and a veto by Obama. The White House says it is "difficult to imagine" President Obama signing 9/11 Saudi Arabia damages legislation.
In a rebuke to the White House, the Senate approved a bill Tuesday to allow victims and families of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the terrorist strikes. The bill, which the White House opposes, House Speaker Paul Ryan expressed concerns about, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was slow to embrace, had stalled for months. But in the end, the bill's authors -- John Cornyn of Texas, the second ranking Senate Republican, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Senate Democrat -- were able to pass the bill on a voice vote, a rare feat in the divided chamber, especially for a controversial issue. Formally known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, the bill would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries alleged to have terrorist ties from invoking their sovereign immunity in federal court. Saudi Arabia has long denied any role in the 9/11 attacks, but victims' families have repeatedly sought to bring the matter to court, only to be rebuffed after the country has invoked legal immunity allowed under current law. The bill still needs to be taken up by the House. (Source)
Saudi Arabia appears to be blackmailing the US, saying it would sell off American assets worth a 12-digit figure sum in dollars if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi government to be held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The warning was delivered by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir last month during a visit to Washington, the New York Times reported. He said his country would sell up to $750 billion in US treasury securities and other assets before the bill puts them in jeopardy. The newspaper said Riyadh's resolve to actually deliver on the threat is dubious, since selling off those assets would be technically challenging and would damage the dollar, against which the Saudi national currency is pegged. (More)
The FBI is in possession of 80,000 files detailing possible support for the 9/11 hijackers received from a Saudi family, a new report states, while a former 9/11 Commission member says there is a strong link between the Saudis and the terrorist attacks. The FBI files are related to an investigation of a Saudi family living in Sarasota, Florida that “suddenly vanished” about two weeks before 9/11, the Daily Beast reported. One of the few released case documents highlights the investigation “revealed many connections” between one family member and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks.” Notably, the details of this investigation, initiated in April 2002, were never given to the 9/11 Committee, according to former Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), who helped lead the inquiry. (More)



May 14, 2016

SAUDIS BRACING FOR 911 DISCLOSURE



Former 9/11 commission member: Saudi role must be probed.

Saudi Arabia is confident nothing in a secret 28-page section of a US congressional report on the September 11 attacks implicates its leaders. (PDF) But some officials worry its eventual publication — 15 years after the assault on New York and Washington — will stir suspicion at a time of tense ties. In December 2002, a year after the attacks, the House and Senate committees on intelligence published a report into the US investigation into them. But the then president, George W. Bush, ordered that 28 pages of the report be classified to protect the methods and identities of US intelligence sources. Last month, former senator Bob Graham said the pages should be made public and alleged Saudi officials had provided assistance to the 9/11 hijackers. Graham, who was the Senate intelligence committee chairman, said the White House had told him they will decide by June whether to declassify the pages. The issue of alleged — and fiercely denied — Saudi involvement in the attacks has been brought up again by attempts to lodge a lawsuit against the kingdom. (Source)



SAUDI ROLE IN THE EXPANSION OF ISLAM 





May 1, 2016

SAUDI ARABIA'S OIL POWER IS WINDING DOWN



Western dependence on Saudi oil is diminishing. This makes a fundamental change in the geopolitical paradigm possible. The pernicious role of the custodians of Arab Imperialism is winding down. The terror Kingdom has seen the writing on the wall and is looking ahead to restructuring its economy.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Ben Salman laid out his economic plan for Saudi Arabia 2030. The vision, if applied, means the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be transformed profoundly in all aspects. While the plan may lead to positioning the Kingdom in the twenty first century and making it a considerable economic power on the global theatre, it also brings challenges and tests the will of the Saudi people and the wisdom of the Saudi elite.

Lower oil prices, budget deficit, regional turmoil, and social and economic stagnation encouraged the visionary young Prince to come out with this transformative plan which will both restructure the Kingdom’s economy and rewrite its social contract. The plan was preceded with a long and through search for ways forward. Some of the best economic and financial brains in the world were invited to contribute their ideas, and some of the biggest financial and economic institutions globally participated in the debate. The young Prince entered the challenge without any prior ideological inclination. He was focused only on facts and on finding a way forward for his country. (Source)



April 26, 2016

28 PAGES: COVER UP OF SAUDI TERROR ROLE



As President Obama prepares to visit Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, his administration is under increasing pressure to declassify 28 pages that, according to many who’ve read them, illustrate financial links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers. Meanwhile, a far lesser-known document from the files of the 9/11 Commission—written by the same principal authors as the 28 pages and declassified last summer without publicity and without media analysis—indicates investigators proposed exploring to what extent “political, economic and other considerations” affected U.S. government investigations of links between Saudi Arabia and 9/11.


Wednesday’s Capitol Hill press conference accompanying the reintroduction of a House resolution urging the president to declassify a 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers is worth watching or reading in its entirety—particularly to appreciate the conviction of Congressmen Walter Jones and Stephen Lynch, former Senator Bob Graham and 9/11 family members. For those who prefer a condensed version, however, here’s a short collection of quotes we found particularly noteworthy. (Source)




April 21, 2016

SAUDI INVOLVEMENT IN THE 9/11 TERROR PLOT II



How can Obama break bread with them? President meets with Saudi ruler in Riyadh as row rages over secret report 'linking the Arab kingdom with 9/11 attacks'


  • Terrorist certificate placed in envelope from Saudi embassy in Washington
  • Details sparked concerns government may have links to the terror attacks 
  •  Relations between US and Saudi are at a low point, with Obama snubbed by the King as he arrived at Riyadh airport 
  • Obama has been accused of siding with Saudi over 9/11 victims' families
  • Families have been pushing Congress for the right to sue Saudi Arabia Row over whether to declassify 28 pages of papers has intensified (Source)

April 19, 2016

SAUDI INVOLVEMENT IN THE 9/11 TERROR PLOT I


The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.
“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation. 
President Obama will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and other Saudi officials. It is unclear whether the dispute over the Sept. 11 legislation will be on the agenda for the talks. (...) Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot. Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly. (...)

Edwin M. Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he thought the Saudis were most likely making an “empty threat.” Selling hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets would not only be technically difficult to pull off, he said, but would also very likely cause global market turmoil for which the Saudis would be blamed. Moreover, he said, it could destabilize the American dollar — the currency to which the Saudi riyal is pegged.  (Source)

Paul Sperry in the New York Post writes that...

(...) the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom. (...) the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the cover up goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled.

Co-conspirators were let off the hook. Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.” Those sources say the pages missing from the 9/11 congressional inquiry report — which comprise the entire final chapter dealing with “foreign support for the September 11 hijackers” — details “incontrovertible evidence” gathered from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.

Some information has leaked from the redacted section, including a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transfer of some $130,000 from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.

An investigator who worked with the JTTF in Washington complained that instead of investigating Bandar, the US government protected him — literally. He said the State Department assigned a security detail to help guard Bandar not only at the embassy, but also at his McLean, Va., mansion. The source added that the task force wanted to jail a number of embassy employees, “but the embassy complained to the US attorney” and their diplomatic visas were revoked as a compromise.

Former FBI agent John Guandolo, who worked 9/11 and related al Qaeda cases out of the bureau’s Washington field office, says Bandar should have been a key suspect in the 9/11 probe. “The Saudi ambassador funded two of the 9/11 hijackers through a third party,” Guandolo said. “He should be treated as a terrorist suspect, as should other members of the Saudi elite class who the US government knows are currently funding the global jihad.” (Source)


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