Reply #2: it was not Clarke's decision.....

[nostamj]

Recently, however, Richard Clarke, the former head of anti-terrorism at the National Security Council, gave some answers while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on terrorism. "I do recall the State Department coming to us that week ," Clarke testified,

saying that the Saudi Embassy felt that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Arabs in this country, particularly Saudis, might be victims of retribution attacks, and they wanted therefore to take some Saudi students and the Saudi citizens back to their kingdom for safety, and could they be given permission to fly, even though we had grounded all flights. Now, what I recall is that I asked for flight manifests of everyone on board and all of those names need to be directly and individually vetted by the FBI before they were allowed to leave the country. And I also wanted the FBI to sign off even on the concept of Saudis being allowed to leave the country. And as I recall, all of that was done. It is true that members of the bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can't say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1282/18_55/109411350/p1/article.jhtml