11.Sep.2001 -What _Bush Didn't (Want To) Know About- See No Evil - 01.Mar.2003

TomPaine.com

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2001 + AUTHENTICAMIGOS

Did Our ^USA President Spike The Investigation Of Bin Laden?
On my BBC television show, Newsnight, an USA journalist confessed that,

11.Sep.2001 -since the attacks- USA reporters are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers:

"It's an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented.

In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," Dan Rather said.

Without his makeup, Rather looked drawn, old + defeated in confessing that he too had given in.

"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often."
Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks....

00.000.2002 The reports I did based on this information won the California State University School of Journalism's Project Censored Award.

It's not the kind of prize you want to win - it's given to crucial stories that were effectively banned from USA airwaves + papers.3

I don't want any misunderstanding here, so I must emphasize what we did not find: We uncovered no information, none whatsoever, that Bush [BGW968] had any advance knowledge of the plan to attack the World Trade Center on 11.Sep.2001 , nor, heaven forbid, any involvement in the attack.
FBI Document 199I
What we did discover was serious enough.

To begin with, from less-than-happy FBI agents we obtained an interesting document, some 30 pages long, marked "SECRET."

I've reproduced a couple of pages here (figure 2.1). Note the designation "199I" -- that's FBI-speak for "national security matter."

According to insiders,

00.000.0000-Sep.13,2001 FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the bin Laden family, bin Laden, Abdullah + bin Laden, Omar, but were told to stay away by superiors -- until Sep.13,2001 .

Sep.13,2001 -By then, Abdullah + Omar were long gone from the USA.
Why no investigation of the brothers bin Laden?

The Bush [BGW968]administration's line is the Binladdins (a more common spelling of the Arabic name) are good folk.

Osama's the Black Sheep, supposedly cut off from his Saudi kin.

But the official line notwithstanding, some FBI agents believed the family had some gray sheep worth questioning -

especially bin Laden, Abdullah + bin Laden, Omar these two working with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth WAMY, which the file labels "a suspected terrorist organization." ....
No matter how vile _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY's indoctrination chats, they are none of the FBI's business.

Recruitment for terror, however, is.

11.Sep.2001 -Before- the governments of India + the Philippines tied _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY to groups staging murderous attacks on civilians.

00.000.200- -Following our broadcast on BBC, the Dutch secret service stated that _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY, "support(ed) violent activity."

00.000.2002 The Wall Street Journal's Glenn Simpson made public a report by Bosnia's government that a charity with bin Laden, Abdullah on its board had channeled money to Chechen guerrillas.

11.Sep.2001 hijackers -Two of the- used an address on the same street as _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY's office in Falls Church, Virginia.
The "Back-Off" Directive + the Islamic Bomb
Despite these tantalizing facts, bin Laden, Abdullah + bin Laden, Abdullah operations were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their working agents.

Just a dumb SNAFU?

Not according to a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity.

00.Jan2001 -After Bush [BGW968] took office "there was a major policy shift" at ^USA National Security Agency. , _{a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity} said,

_{00.Jan2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office} Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks,

especially if they touched on Saudi royals + their retainers.

_{00.Jan.2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office} That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion + a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off-limits for investigation.

_{00.Jan.2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office} bin Laden, Osama was the exception;

_{00.Jan.2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office} bin Laden, Osama remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank.

_{00.Jan.2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office -}now- The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was violated +

_{00.Jan.2001 -After} Bush [BGW968] _{took office -}now- investigations - at least before 11.Sep.2001 - began to die.
And there was a lot to investigate - or in the case of the CIA + FBI under Bush [BGW968] - a lot to ignore.

00.May 1996 in a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris with the financial representative of bin Laden_{, Osama'}s network the Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim + non-Muslim gun traffickers, met to determine who would pay how much to bin Laden_{, Osama} .

This was not so much an act of support but of protection - a payoff to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia.....

(Through well-known international arms dealers (I'm sorry, but in this business, sinners are better sources than saints) our team was tipped off to--
Clinton Closed an Eye
True-blue Democrats may want to skip the next paragraphs.

If President Bush [BGW968] put the kibosh on investigations of Saudi funding of terror + nuclear bomb programs, this was merely taking a policy of Bill Clinton one step further.
00.000.1996- Following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Clinton hunted Osama with a passion - but a passion circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline.

00.000.1994 a Saudi diplomat defected to the USA with 14,000 pages of documents from Saudi kingdom's sealed file cabinets.

_{00.000.1994 This mother lode of intelligence} included evidence of plans for the assassination of Saudi opponents living in the West + tantalizingly,

_{00.000.1994 This mother lode of intelligence} included details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program - the first attempt to build an Islamic Bomb.

during the Reagan + _Bush [BGHW948] years when our own ^USA government still thought Saddam too marvelous for words, the Saudi government, according to the defector, Al Khilewi, Mohammed slipped Saddam the nuclear loot.

The thought was that he would only use the bomb to vaporize Iranians....
00.000.1997 the Canadians caught + extradited to USA one of the Khobar Towers attackers.

00.000.1999 Vernon Jordan's law firm stepped in + - poof! - the killer was shipped back to Saudi Arabia before he could reveal all he knew about Al Qaeda (valuable) + the Saudis (embarrassing).

I reviewed, but was not permitted to take notes on, the alleged terrorist's debriefing by the FBI.

To my admittedly inexpert eyes, there was enough on Al Qaeda to make him a source on terrorists worth holding on to.

Not that he was set free - he's in one of the kingdom's dungeons - but his info is sealed up with him.

The terrorist's extradition was "Clinton's." "Clinton's parting kiss to the Saudis," as one insider put it.
This make-a-sheik-happy policy of Clinton's may seem similar to Bush [BGW968]'s, but the difference is significant.

Where Clinton said, "Go slow," Bush [BGW968] policymakers said, "No go."

The difference is between closing one eye + closing them both.
Blowback + _Bush [BGHW948] .
Still, we are left with the question of why both Bush [BGW968] + Clinton would hold back disclosure of Saudi funding of terror.

I got the first glimpse of an answer from Springmann, Michael who headed up the USA State Department's visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during the Reagan-_Bush [BGHW948] years.

"In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country.

I complained bitterly at the time there." That was Springmann's mistake.

He was one of those conscientious midlevel bureaucrats who did not realize that when he filed reports about rules violations he was jeopardizing the cover for a huge multicontinental intelligence operation aimed at the Soviets.

Springmann assumed petty thievery: someone was taking bribes, selling visas; so he couldn't understand why his complaints about rule-breakers were "met with silence" at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
Springmann complained himself right out of a job.

Now a lawyer, he has obtained more information on the questionable "engineers" with no engineering knowledge whom he was ordered to permit into the USA.

"What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by bin Laden_{, Osama} , to the USA for terrorist training by the CIA.

They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."
Clinton hunted bin Laden_{, Osama} with a passion ... circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline.
But then they turned their talents against the post-Soviet power: us.

In the parlance of spook-world, this is called "blowback."

bin Laden_{, Osama} + bin Laden_{, Osama} bloody brethren were created in USA's own Frankenstein factory.

It would not do for the current president nor agency officials to dig back to find that some of the terrorists we are hunting today were trained + armed by the Reagan-_Bush [BGHW948]administration.

And that's one of the problems for agents seeking to investigate groups like _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY, or bin Laden, Abdullah.

_{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY literature that talks about that "compassionate young man bin Laden_{, Osama} " is likely to have been disseminated, if not written, by our very own USA government.

If bin Laden, Abdullah's Bosnian-operated "charity" was funding Chechnyan guerrillas, it is only possible because the Clinton CIA gave the wink + nod to _{World Assembly of Muslim Youth} WAMY + other groups who were aiding Bosnian guerrillas when they were fighting Serbia, a USA-approved enemy.

"What we're talking about," says national security expert Joe Trento, "is embarrassing, career-destroying blowback for intelligence officials."

And, he could add, for Bush [BGW968] presidential father _Bush [BGHW948] .
The Family Business
I still didn't have an answer to all my questions. We knew that Clinton + the _Bushes were reluctant to discomfort the Saudis by unearthing their connections to terrorists -- but what made this new president take particular care to protect the Saudis, even to the point of stymying his own intelligence agencies?
The answers kept coming back: "Carlyle" + "Arbusto."
While some people have guardian angels, our president seems to have guardian sheiks....
Behind Carlyle is a private, invitation-only investment group whose holdings in the war industry make it effectively one of USA's biggest defense contractors. For example, Carlyle owned United Technologies, the maker of our fighter jets. Carlyle has the distinction of claiming both of the presidents _Bush as paid retainers.

-until Caterair went bust- Bush [BGW968] served on the board of Carlyle's airplane food company.

00.000.1999 The senior _Bush [BGHW948]traveled to Saudi Arabia for Carlyle.

11.Sep.2001 -until just after the attacks- The bin Ladens were among Carlyle's select backers, when the connection became impolitic.

Carlyle 's chairman is Carlucci, _Frank former USA President _Bush [BGHW948]Sr.'s defense secretary.

The average Carlyle partner has gained about $25 million in equity.

Notably, Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz employed Carlyle as his advisor in buying up 10 5 of Citicorp's preferred stock.

The choice of Carlyle for the high-fee work was odd, as the group is not an investment bank.

One would almost think the Saudi potentate wanted to enrich Carlyle's members....
Who Lost the War on Terror?
So who lost the War on Terror?

bin Laden_{, Osama} ?

From bin Laden_{, Osama} point of view, bin Laden_{, Osama} 's made the celebrity cutthroats' Hall of Fame.

Where is bin Laden_{, Osama} ?

Don't ask Bush [BGW968]; our ^USA leader just changes the subject to Iraq.

So we have the 82nd Airborne looking for bin Laden_{, Osama} among the camels in Afghanistan

when, in all likelihood, the billionaire butcher - now likely beardless - is chillin' by the pool at the Ritz Carlton, knocking back a brewsky + laughing at us while two blonde Barbies massage his feet.
Bush [BGW968] failed to get bin Laden_{, Osama} .

But we ^USA did successfully eliminate the threat of Congresswoman McKinney - you remember, the one who dared question ChoicePoint, the company that helped Florida Harris, Katherine eliminate Black voters.
00.Nov.2001 -Following our BBC broadcast + Guardian report in-, McKinney cited our stories on the floor of Congress, calling for an investigation of the intelligence failures + policy prejudices you've just read here.

She was labeled a traitor, a freak, a conspiracy nut + "a looney" - the latter by her state's Democratic Senator, who led the mob in the political lynching of the uppity Black woman.

The New York Times wrote, "She angered some Black voters by suggesting that President Bush [BGW968] might have known in advance about the 11.Sep.2001 attacks but had done nothing so his supporters could make money in war."

The fact that she said no such thing doesn't matter;

the Times is always more influential than the truth.

Dan Rather had warned her, shut up, don't ask questions + you can avoid the neck-lacing.

She didn't and it cost her her seat in Congress.
McKinney's electoral corpse in the road silenced politicians, the media was mum, but some Americans still would not get in line.

For them we have new laws to permit investigating citizens without warrants + the label of terrorist fellow-traveler attached to groups from civil rights organizations to trade treaty protestors.

Yet not one FBI or CIA agent told us, "If only we didn't have that pesky Bill of Rights, we would have nailed bin Laden_{, Osama}".

Not one said, "What we need is a new bureaucracy for Fatherland Security."

Not one said we needed to jail everyone in the Midwest named "Ahmed."

They had a single request: for Bush [BGW968]'s security henchmen to get their boot heels off agents' necks + remove the shield of immunity from the Saudis.
McKinney, [Cynthia] 's electoral corpse in the road silenced politicians, the media was mum, but some Americans still would not get in line.
That leaves one final, impertinent question.

Who won?
(see TomPaine.com for entire article including footnotes)