As the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 jihad attacks draws near, nearly 1,800 people who lost loved ones on that terrible day have made it clear that one person they don’t want to see at anniversary events is Old Joe Biden. And it’s not, as you may have expected, because they don’t want commemorations to descend into a platform for yet another one of Joe’s embarrassing displays of his rapidly deteriorating mental state.
NBC News reported Friday that the Dotty Puppet is not welcome at events in New York City and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the plane on which courageous patriots foiled the jihadis went down, “unless he upholds his pledge to declassify U.S. government evidence that they believe may show a link between Saudi Arabian leaders and the attacks.”
The families explained in a statement: “We cannot in good faith, and with veneration to those lost, sick, and injured, welcome the president to our hallowed grounds until he fulfills his commitment.” They insisted that they were not acting upon some crazy conspiracy theory: “Since the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission in 2004 much investigative evidence has been uncovered implicating Saudi government officials in supporting the attacks. Through multiple administrations, the Department of Justice and the FBI have actively sought to keep this information secret and prevent the American people from learning the full truth about the 9/11 attacks.”
Brett Eagleson, whose father was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, said: “We are frustrated, tired and saddened with the fact that the U.S. government for 20 years has chosen to keep information about the death of our loved ones behind lock and key.”
Even what is known about Saudi involvement in 9/11 is disturbing enough. The 28-page section of the 9/11 report detailing Saudi involvement in the jihad attacks was finally released in 2016 (albeit with substantial portions still redacted), and it is now clear why one president who held hands with the Saudi king and another who bowed to him worked so hard all these years to keep these pages secret: The report shows that it is highly likely that the 9/11 jihad murderers received significant help from people at the highest levels of the Saudi government.
The details are sketchy, but damning. The report states that Omar al-Bayoumi, who “may be a Saudi intelligence officer,” gave “substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. Al-Bayoumi met the hijackers at a public place shortly after his meeting with an individual at the Saudi consulate.”
Around the same time, al-Bayoumi “had extensive contact with Saudi Government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.” That company “reportedly had ties to Usama bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida.”
Another possible Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, who “has many ties to the Saudi government” and was also a supporter of Osama bin Laden, boasted that he did more for al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi than al-Bayoumi did. He also “reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi government officials.” The report says that at one point, “a member of the Saudi Royal Family provided Bassnan with a significant amount of cash,” and that “he and his wife have received financial support from the Saudi ambassador to the United States and his wife.”
That ambassador was Prince Bandar, about whom the New York Times later noted: “No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.”
Then there was Shaykh al-Thumairy, “an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and one of the ‘imams’ at the King Fahad mosque in Culver City, California,” who also “may have been in contact” with al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi.
Saleh al-Hussayen, “reportedly a Saudi Interior Ministry official, stayed at the same hotel in Herndon, Virginia where al-Hazmi was staying. While al-Hussayen claimed after September 11 not to know the hijackers, FBI agents believed he was being deceptive. He was able to depart the United States despite FBI efforts to locate and re-interview him.” Who got him out of the country?
There is much more. The report redacts the name of “another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family,” but notes that he “is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.” There is no telling who this could have been, but Prince Bandar’s unlisted phone number turned up in a phone book of Abu Zubaydah, “a senior al-Qa’ida operative captured in Pakistan in March 2002.” Abu Zubaydah also had the number of “a bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC.”
Related: Why Did Facebook Censor My 9/11 Photo From 5 Years Ago?
The report also mentions a CIA memorandum that “discusses alleged financial connections between the September 11 hijackers, Saudi Government officials, and members of the Saudi Royal Family.” This memorandum was passed on to an FBI investigator; yet “despite the clear national implications of the CIA memorandum, the FBI agent included the memorandum in an individual case file and did not forward it to FBI Headquarters.” Why?
There is still more, and with this much smoke, there is almost certainly fire: The Saudi connection to 9/11 appears to go to the highest levels of the Saudi government, so the families are raising an important point. And they’re right: All this information should be released now, and there needs to be a further investigation as well into why this has been covered up for so long. Why has this sham alliance been maintained with a nation whose highest officials were apparently involved with those who attacked us? Who in Washington benefited? We may never know the answers. But that the 9/11 families are calling Biden’s handlers to account over all this is a step in the right direction.
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