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Former September 11 probe chair calls for reopening inquiry
A pair of roses and a U.S. flag are left on one of the panels containing the names of the victims of the attacks on the first day that the 9/11 Memorial was opened to the public at the World Trade Center site in New York, September 12, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar
ORLANDO, Fla |
ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) - The former co-chair of a Congressional inquiry after the September 11, 2001 attacks called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation following a news report linking the hijackers to a Saudi Arabian couple who lived in Florida.
Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham said he has no reason to doubt the news report, which said the Saudi Arabian couple abruptly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind a full refrigerator, clothes, furnishings and a new car in the driveway.
The report was published by BrowardBulldog.org., a nonprofit Internet news site and was simultaneously published on the news website of the Miami Herald.
If true, it reveals another Saudi terrorism connection that was never disclosed by the FBI to the public or to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks, said Graham, who was co-chair of the committee.
The FBI office in Tampa issued a statement on Monday saying the Sarasota case was one of many leads that "were resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."
Graham called the Sarasota case "eerily similar" to the FBI's failure to tell the intelligence committee about a former Saudi civil servant, Omar al-Bayoumi, who supported two hijackers while they were living in San Diego. Graham said an investigator for his committee independently unearthed the information about al-Bayoumi.
"Why did the U.S. government go to such lengths to cover up the Saudi involvement?" Graham said.
The former Democratic senator from Florida has long been critical of the administration of former President George W. Bush for refusing to release 28 pages of the intelligence committee's report, which allegedly included information about Saudi financial support of terrorists.
Information about the Saudi couple in Sarasota was reported by Anthony Summers, an independent journalist and co-author of The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, and Dan Christensen, editor of the BrowardBulldog.org.
Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud and their small children resided in a home owned by Anoud's father, Esam Ghazzawi, in the gated Sarasota subdivision called Prestancia, according to the report.
The report said the FBI learned of the couple from a suspicious neighbor on the day of the attacks.
According to the report, the FBI connected the couple to more than a dozen terrorists through telephone records and through their car license tags and drivers licenses as they passed through the subdivision's security gate.
Among the terrorists who visited the home or called the couple was 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta, the report said.
The report was based on quotes from an unnamed counterterrorism official, a neighbor, subdivision administrators, the security guard and the subdivision lawyer, who said the FBI tried to get him to lure the homeowner back to the U.S.
According to the report, the Sarasota couple returned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with Anoud's father after abandoning their home.
(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Greg McCune)
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Remember the Bush administration in the immediate days after 9/11 gathering up as many Saudi nationals as possible in the U.S., flying them to staging areas from where they were flown out of the country, often without facing any interrogation? And that all this happened while there was a no-fly order in effect for all other aircraft?
Based on what Summers and Christensen are reporting about this Sarasota Saudi family, reportedly on an FBI watch list before 9/11, and what former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) is saying, the coddling of Saudis in the U.S. (and overseas) by the Bush administration happened both before and after 9/11, giving the appearance of a hands-off policy regarding the Saudis, especially among the political appointees and elected Republicans at the top of the Bush administration.
Is this why the Bush administration blew off so many pre-9/11 warning signs, because all the signs pointed to a Saudi-backed plot to commit a terrorist attack inside the U.S.? Is this why former President Bush blew off the August 6, 2001 PDB entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.”? Is this why Condi Rice held only ONE top-level “counter-terrorism” principals meeting ONE week before the attacks? Is this why the incoming Bush administration in early 2001 blew off all the briefings by outgoing Clinton administration about the al Qaeda threat, and by extension, the Saudi threat to our country? Is this why the incoming Bush administration throughout 2001 before the 9/11 attacks blew off retaliating against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden (the Saudi al Qaeda terrorist ringleader), after it was proven they were behind the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 2000?
And after 9/11, the Bush administration whisking Saudi nationals out of the country, and then lying to or withholding information about Saudi/al Qaeda involvement in the 9/11 attacks from congressional 9/11 investigators and the 9/11 Commission (although much of this Saudi involvement might be reported in the heavily redacted portions of their final report, per orders of the Bush administration). And what about Iraq, and claims by Bush administration officials that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were somehow connected to the 9/11 plot? Was this a smoke screen thrown up to hide Saudi involvement, to deflect attention away from the Saudis?
Until I read this Broward Bulldog, I hadn’t realized how widespread Saudi involvement really was in the 9/11 attacks. Apparently, Saudi nationals (families or individuals) inside the United States before 9/11, presumably acting on behalf of the Saudi monarchy to keep an eye on Saudi students studying in the U.S., were actually fronts for members of al Qaeda planning their terrorist attack, providing funds and help in training for their mission, enrolling them in nearby flight and martial arts schools. Besides in San Diego and Sarasota, was there one such Saudi family living close to where the suspected 20th hijacker was attending a flight school in the Mid West, a Saudi national who was picked up three weeks before the 9/11 attacks, whose personal effects were not searched because FBI headquarters refused to okay a search warrant. Except under FISA at the time, a search could have been done, with the FBI only required to justify their warrantless search within 48 hours before FISA court judges. IOW, a pattern is emerging, “dots” are connecting, indicating Saudi-coordinated al Qaeda terrorist cells existing in the U.S. before 9/11, with evidence that U.S. authorities knew about their existence, but did nothing. Why, because Saudis were involved, and the Bush administration didn’t want to do anything to upset the Saudis? I think so, but only opening up a new 9/11 investigation will discover if true.
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