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Former Gov. Bob Graham goes on 60 Minutes to talk about Saudi/911 hijackers connections
Tonight.On Sunday right after the Masters' Golf Tournament ends, CBS will feature former Florida Gov. Bob Graham's quest to declassify and make public a report outlining allegations of Saudi Arabian support of some of the hijackers who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Graham has been trying to get President Obama to declassify a 28-page report on a Saudi family that lived in a gated Sarasota community where some of the pilots visited in the weeks before the attack. The family fled about 10 days before September 11, leaving a wave of questions investigated by the FBI.
Graham, a former Senator who chaired the Intelligence Committee and co-chaired a joint commission that investigated the attacks, says the report would prove the pilots had support from high-ranking Saudi officials.
The 28-page report was not released in the Commission's final report concluding that the 19 hijackers acted without assistance when they hijacked three passenger planes and crashed them into the Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
When he started questioning the omission in 2011, top FBI officials detained Graham and his wife at an FBI office at Dulles International Airport in an apparent attempt to talk the longtime Florida official into dropping his efforts.
.....
Graham has been trying to get President Obama to declassify a 28-page report on a Saudi family that lived in a gated Sarasota community where some of the pilots visited in the weeks before the attack. The family fled about 10 days before September 11, leaving a wave of questions investigated by the FBI.
Graham, a former Senator who chaired the Intelligence Committee and co-chaired a joint commission that investigated the attacks, says the report would prove the pilots had support from high-ranking Saudi officials.
The 28-page report was not released in the Commission's final report concluding that the 19 hijackers acted without assistance when they hijacked three passenger planes and crashed them into the Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
When he started questioning the omission in 2011, top FBI officials detained Graham and his wife at an FBI office at Dulles International Airport in an apparent attempt to talk the longtime Florida official into dropping his efforts.
.....
Bob Graham has called on President Obama to reopen the September 11 investigation., March 7, 2012
Yes, the Saudi family living in FL "vanished". Bob Graham didn't know about it until Sept 2011.
Russ Baker on the new Florida evidence that emerged in 2011, from 2011
Bob Graham: "Frankly, my friends-- to use a blunt term -- blood is going to be on your hands.", from 2003
No, Chelsea. Clairvoyance had nothing to do with it., February 16, 2008
“Did you read it?” the woman screamed., March 3, 2008
Thirteen years ago, Bob Graham read it. He warned his colleagues. Most ignored him.
Bob Graham is not a man anyone should ignore, especially when it concerns our national security.
60 Minutes.
Tonight.
113 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I crossed them off my list after the Lara Logan thing was the last straw of a number of straws.
Thanks for the heads up. I always liked Bob Graham.
The putrid stink of Republican-Saudi connections around 9/11 is repugnant to all honorable citizens.
"What we did bothered me this much." "That much, huh?"
Thanks Bob Graham for not caving-in to the FBI's intimidation. That takes
some balls. 
I'll set the DVR. 
Wed to one of the most brutal regressive regimes left on the globe, the leadership of this monarchy has funded terrorism for decades while our own leaders continually kiss their damn assess.
<a href="
.html" target="_blank"><img src="
" border="0" alt="Bush Saudi Kiss photo BushPrinceKiss.jpg"/></a>
Peace to you.
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]A PNAC member was quoted in 2000 or early 2001 as saying they needed "a new Pearl Harbor" event to solidify public support for accelerating military interventions in the Middle East.
Maps were already drawn, dividing up Iraq's (and who else's?) resources among major oil companies.
Then 9/11 happened - with our best Arab buddies deep in the thick of it.
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]It's been a while since I read up on it, just remembered that was what stuck most in my mind.
Thanks for the refresher!
the republican party. Now that the republicans have completely gone off the rails, it's happening faster than anyone ever thought possible.
This morning I could not believe my eyes when I saw a clip posted here of Hillary and DeBlasio joking about "CP" time (colored people's time).
In the past few days, Obama has walked right to the edge on defending Hillary over her email scandal. It is a deliberate attempt to influence that decision.
We are watching this conversion happen, right before our very eyes. I never thought I would see such a thing, but I am, and it is indeed happening.
Cher
No doubt about it, our entire Congress turned away from using the Constitution as their guide, and instead relied on fear mongering the American people.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130817122719/http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
-Rebuilding America's Defenses, September 2000
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
(p. 63 of PDF)
-Rebuilding America's Defenses, September 2000
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]
seeing that phrase on the original Web page.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
<wayback.archive.org/web/20020923154604/http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf> page 51
(Copy and paste the URL)
<wayback.archive.org/web/20020923154604/http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf> page 51
ETA: Here's something about the map, from our own EarlG: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1858836
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Thanks for the further documentation.
As someone who is dealing with a progressive illness/injury after working at Ground Zero after 9-11, I saw nothing in this report that will change the status quo.
Be it George H.W., Dubya, or Jeb.
Blood and guts everywhere, but no brains to be found.
Ya know, the typical Republican National Convention.
I still haven't forgotten about the "purple heart bandaids" they were all wearing back in 2004.
Remember the guy who got told to zip his lip when he blew the whistle about the passports from Saudi Arabia?
The Twenty-Eight Pages
BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT
The New Yorker, SEPTEMBER 9, 2014
EXCERPT...
Bayoumi and a friend drove from San Diego, where they lived, to L.A. Bayoumi then went to the Saudi consulate, where he spent about an hour meeting with an official in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs named Fahad al-Thumairy, whom he considered to be his spiritual adviser. (In 2002, Thumairy was stripped of his diplomatic visa and deported, because of suspected ties to terrorists.) Afterward, Bayoumi and his friend drove to a halal restaurant in Culver City. Bayoumi later told investigators that, while eating there, he happened to overhear two men—Hazmi and Mihdhar—speaking Arabic with Gulf accents. He struck up a conversation with them and soon invited them to move to San Diego. He set them up in the same apartment complex where he lived. Because the hijackers-in-training did not have a checking account, Bayoumi paid their security deposit and first month’s rent (for which they immediately reimbursed him). He also introduced them to members of the Arab community, possibly including the imam of a local mosque, Anwar al-Awlaki—later to become the most prominent spokesperson for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Another Saudi who was in San Diego at the time, Osama Basnan, also befriended Hazmi and Mihdhar. As it happened, Basnan’s wife was receiving charitable gifts from Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa. The payments—as much as seventy-three thousand dollars over a period of three years—were supposed to fund the treatment of a medical condition that Basnan’s wife suffered from. According to pleadings in the lawsuit against the Saudis, some of that money went to support the hijackers in San Diego. The F.B.I. has not found any evidence that the money got into the hands of the hijackers, however, and the 9/11 Commission found no links to the royal family.
“We assert that purported ‘charities,’ established by the government of the Kingdom to propagate radical Wahhabi ideology throughout the world, served as the primary sources of funding and logistical support for Al Qaeda for more than a decade leading up to the 9/11 attacks,” Sean Carter, one of the lead attorneys in the lawsuit, told me. “Not coincidentally, these so-called charities were themselves regulated by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which from its formation, in 1993, assumed primary responsibility for the Kingdom’s efforts to spread Wahhabi Islam.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages
War and its inherent instability are good for one thing: Jacking up the price of crude. When it's at $100 a barrel, the Kingdom's credit at the casino may be $10 Trillion. When it's at $10 a barrel, cash up front time.
Greg Palast spelled it out:
And that's how George Bush won the war in Iraq. The invasion was not about "blood for oil", but something far more sinister: blood for no oil. War to keep supply tight and send prices skyward.
And that's how George Bush won the war in Iraq. The invasion was not about "blood for oil", but something far more sinister: blood for no oil. War to keep supply tight and send prices skyward.
Thank you for another outstanding OP and thread, seafan. You are the opposite of television: People get smarter after reading your stuff.
Many thanks, Octafish, for those articles.
Sen. Graham: Bush covered up Saudi involvement in 9/11, September 8, 2004
In this must-read interview of Senator Bob Graham by Salon:
Why do you think the White House is so intent on keeping that information (the 28 classified pages) from the public?
I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.
I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.
viaSalon
In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee’s attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI’s protective custody and could not be located without the bureau’s cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?
We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn’t want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.
Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to [co-chairman] Porter Goss and me, saying, “The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source.” What that tells me is the FBI wasn’t acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.
Did the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, play any role in what you describe as the support network for these two hijackers? As you know, Bandar is a great friend of the Bush family.
Most of the things that he did are, frankly, still classified. But he has clearly demonstrated that he has a close relationship with President Bush. You have no doubt seen that famous picture of the two of them together at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. And then there’s the fact that within a few hours after 9/11, Prince Bandar was able to gain access to the president to make the case for why 140 or so Saudis should be given permission to leave the United States immediately.
Did the Saudi Embassy play a role?
I’m going to have to defer answering that question. Those things that still have not been made available to the public, such as this issue of what Prince Bandar’s participation was, I did not include in the book.
It sounds then as if the role of Bandar and the Saudi Embassy is addressed in those 27 classified pages of the panel’s report?
Most of it would be addressed there, yes.
We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn’t want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.
Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to [co-chairman] Porter Goss and me, saying, “The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source.” What that tells me is the FBI wasn’t acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.
Did the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, play any role in what you describe as the support network for these two hijackers? As you know, Bandar is a great friend of the Bush family.
Most of the things that he did are, frankly, still classified. But he has clearly demonstrated that he has a close relationship with President Bush. You have no doubt seen that famous picture of the two of them together at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. And then there’s the fact that within a few hours after 9/11, Prince Bandar was able to gain access to the president to make the case for why 140 or so Saudis should be given permission to leave the United States immediately.
Did the Saudi Embassy play a role?
I’m going to have to defer answering that question. Those things that still have not been made available to the public, such as this issue of what Prince Bandar’s participation was, I did not include in the book.
It sounds then as if the role of Bandar and the Saudi Embassy is addressed in those 27 classified pages of the panel’s report?
Most of it would be addressed there, yes.
Along those lines, you said that in a meeting at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., in February 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks, who was then conducting the war in Afghanistan, told you that resources were already being shifted quietly to Iraq. Additionally, you write that Franks told you that Somalia and Yemen, not Iraq, were the next logical targets in any action to combat terrorism.
Yes. I had just received a briefing on Afghanistan when Gen. Franks invited me to come into his office, just the two of us. He told me that military and intelligence resources were being redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq. What that suggested to me was [first] that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went to Iraq, and long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support. Secondly, it suggested we couldn’t fight the two wars concurrently to victory, but that it would take redeployment of personnel from Afghanistan to Iraq to make that a successful invasion. Third, it suggested that somebody — I assume the president — had decided that Iraq was a higher priority for the United States than was completing the war in Afghanistan.
Yes. I had just received a briefing on Afghanistan when Gen. Franks invited me to come into his office, just the two of us. He told me that military and intelligence resources were being redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq. What that suggested to me was [first] that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went to Iraq, and long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support. Secondly, it suggested we couldn’t fight the two wars concurrently to victory, but that it would take redeployment of personnel from Afghanistan to Iraq to make that a successful invasion. Third, it suggested that somebody — I assume the president — had decided that Iraq was a higher priority for the United States than was completing the war in Afghanistan.
Do you believe the White House manipulated the intelligence to persuade the public to back the invasion? “Manipulate” may be too strong a word for you. But it took a request from you and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to get the intelligence community to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on the danger posed by Iraq, a step that would seem an obvious one to take, considering the stakes to the nation.
I am comfortable with the word “manipulate.” There was a chapter that did not become known until three or four months ago that occurred in May 2002. Various leaders of the CIA were called down to the White House and told that the White House wanted to have a public document that could be released under the CIA’s label but which would make the case for going to war with Iraq. I think one of the reasons they didn’t want to do a formal National Intelligence Estimate was because it would be done not by the CIA alone but by all of the members of the intelligence community, and it was likely to reach a different conclusion. At least it would contain dissenting opinions and caveats that wouldn’t be in a CIA public document.
I am comfortable with the word “manipulate.” There was a chapter that did not become known until three or four months ago that occurred in May 2002. Various leaders of the CIA were called down to the White House and told that the White House wanted to have a public document that could be released under the CIA’s label but which would make the case for going to war with Iraq. I think one of the reasons they didn’t want to do a formal National Intelligence Estimate was because it would be done not by the CIA alone but by all of the members of the intelligence community, and it was likely to reach a different conclusion. At least it would contain dissenting opinions and caveats that wouldn’t be in a CIA public document.
Much more information presented by Senator Graham in this interview.
Octafish, I don't know exactly where I was when I first figured out that we, the people, have been had, and had for many decades. Was it the Election 2000 debacle in Florida?
Was it during the duplicity, scandal, false feel-goodism and systematic deterioration of Democratic ideals during the Clinton years of the 1990s?
Was it during Poppy Bush's invasion of Iraq in the early 1990s, killing many thousands of Iraqis, and leading to Dim Son's next invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by the primal scream of watching another Bush trying to buy his way into power in 2016?
Was it watching the snakes slither away from Iran-Contra crimes, as Poppy pardoned the bunch on Christmas Eve, 1992?
Was it during the murderous years of Reagan in the 80s?
Was it watching the textile mills close down in the South and shipping all those jobs to faraway lands, and forcing many of our southern families into abject poverty?
Was it during the darkness of the Nixon/Viet Nam era?
Was it during the horror and sorrow of losing John F. Kennedy in 1963?
I don't know any more. All I know now is that we probably have one more chance to get back onto the right path to survival into history, and that is to propel Bernie Sanders into power.
Octafish, for the past decade and a half here, you've been slicing and dicing the BFEE, and unearthing the Truth for all of us here, and your efforts to inform have spread farther than you know. 'Thank you' just seems inadequate. But, again, thank you.
You are a friend to us all.
