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The Truth about Sept 11 (pg. 3)
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| djarecebo |
| its all true.. there is a huge ing conspiracy with 9/11 and plenty of other like going to the moon. I believe we went to the moon, but the first time and others were all faked. There was a whole show about it on fox a while ago plus there is tons of evidence online. I need to get into power so I can expose all this :D |
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| AnotherWay83 |
| i dunno abt the moon landing, but as far as 9-11 is concerned, i know for a fact that *many* ppl. suspect a conspiracy of sorts, and these arent just conspiracy buffs, these are average ppl. who dont even have access to the internet...i remember talking to people abt it on the very evening of 9-11 and i could find ppl. who immediately said sumthing doesnt seem rite...oh well |
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| PhloTron |
| quote: | Originally posted by djarecebo
... There was a whole show about it on fox a while ago ... |
I think this would be the first mistake you made on what media outlet to view in determining "what to believe". I don't agree/nor disagree your points, but I think it's funny you mention Fox "home of most silly television". (except mXc) :D :D :D |
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| MrSquirrel |
| quote: | Originally posted by PhloTron
I think this would be the first mistake you made on what media outlet to view in determining "what to believe". I don't agree/nor disagree your points, but I think it's funny you mention Fox "home of most silly television". (except mXc) :D :D :D |
Oh come now...there is a whole channel called MTV that is nothing but stupid shows.
MrS |
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| PhloTron |
you mean....you mean... the "real world" isn't real???
ahh...i'm distraught.
BWAHAHAHAHA :stongue: :stongue: |
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| occrider |
| Wow ... this thread is really bringing out some interesting people with some ... different ... perspectives. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Wow ... this thread is really bringing out some interesting people with some ... different ... perspectives. |
Gotta love it!
http://www.blogstudio.com/Polis/unger.htm
NEW YORK, N.Y.— Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke tells Vanity Fair that the Bush administration decided to allow a group of Saudis to fly out of the U.S. just after September 11—at a time when access to U.S. airspace was still restricted and required special government approval. According to other sources, at least four flights with about 140 Saudis, including roughly two dozen members of the bin Laden family, flew to Saudi Arabia that week—without even being interviewed or interrogated by the F.B.I.
Officially, the White House has declined to comment. But a source inside the White House says that the administration is confident that no secret flights took place and that there is no evidence to suggest that the White House ever authorized such flights. An F.A.A. spokesman, Chris White, told the Tampa Tribune that a flight on September 13 did not even take place. “It’s not in our logs. It didn’t occur.” In addition, the F.B.I. denies that it played any role in the repatriation.
But Vanity Fair writer Craig Unger interviewed Dan Grossi, a private eye and former Tampa Police Department officer who received a call two days after 9/11 asking him to escort Saudi students on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky, even though private planes were still grounded nationwide. “I was told it would take White House approval,” Grossi tells Unger. But when the plane’s pilot showed up, they took off.
At the time, Richard Clarke chaired an ongoing crisis group in the 18-by-18-foot Situation Room in the West Wing of the White House. Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were hunkered down managing the crisis, and Colin Powell, C.I.A. director George Tenet, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came and went. “Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country,” Clarke tells Unger. “My role was to say that it can’t happen until the F.B.I. approves it. And so the F.B.I. was asked—we had a live connection to the F.B.I—and we asked the F.B.I. to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone . . . O.K. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, ‘Fine, let it happen. . . . I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event—to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying.”
Clarke, who headed the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council, now runs a consulting firm in Virginia and does not recall who initiated the request for approval. He says it was probably either the F.B.I. or the State Department, both of which have denied playing any such role.
“It did not come out of this place,” says a State Department source. “The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done.”
“I can say unequivocally that the F.B.I. had no role in facilitating these flights one way or another,” Special Agent John Iannarelli, the F.B.I.’s spokesman on counterterrorism activities, tells Unger.
However, Saudi Arabia’s director of information, Nail al-Jubeir, said that the flights had been requested by the Saudis and were authorized “at the highest level of the U.S. government.”
After the September 11 attacks, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, the House of Saud, which rules Saudi Arabia, and the bin Laden family. By coincidence, even before the attacks, Bandar had been scheduled to meet President Bush in the White House on September 13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process. The meeting took place as planned. Nail al-Jubeir tells Unger that he does not know if Bandar and the president discussed getting the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudis tried to get their planes to leave before the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them, Unger reports. “I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar’s office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane,” an F.B.I. agent says. “Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that the plane was not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it.” Dale Watson, the F.B.I.’s former head of counterterrorism, tells Unger that while the Saudis were identified, “they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations.” The bureau has declined to release the Saudis’ identities.
The wealthy bin Laden family long ago broke with their terrorist brother, Osama, but Unger reports that some members of the family have had links to militant Islam. Abdullah and Omar bin Laden had been under F.B.I. investigation for their involvement with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which has published writings by one of Osama bin Laden’s principal intellectual influences. According to documents obtained by the Public Education Center in Washington, the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on September 19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was under way. A security official who served under George W. Bush tells Unger, “WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There’s no doubt about it.”
The Saudis’ planes took off from or landed in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, Lexington, Kentucky—and Newark and Boston, both of which had been points of origin for the September 11 attacks. “We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history,” Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston’s Logan airport, tells Unger, “and here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens! . . . I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington. This was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come.”
“I asked [the F.B.I.] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving,” Clarke tells Unger. Clarke assumed the F.B.I. had vetted the bin Ladens prior to September 11. “I have no idea if they did a good job. I’m not in any position to second-guess the F.B.I.”
Prince Bandar has had a 20-year friendship with former president George H. W. Bush. Unger questions whether the long-standing Bush-Saudi relationship could have influenced the administration. The latest in a line of business links between the Bush family and the Saudis involves the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm for which George H. W. Bush is a senior advisor and former secretary of state James Baker III is a senior counselor. The Carlyle Group has received $80 million in Saudi investment, Unger reports, including $2 million from the bin Ladens which was returned to them after September 11. In 1995, Abdulrahman and Sultan bin Mahfouz invested “in the neighborhood of $30 million” in the Carlyle Group, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky. Abdulrahman bin Mafouz was a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as “an al-Qaeda front.” (Carlyle categorically denies that the bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever been investors.)
Clarke believes the decision to let the Saudis go was made because “there’s a realization that we have to work with the government we’ve got in Saudi Arabia. The alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to be more hostile—in fact, extremely hostile—to the U.S.”
The October issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York on September 3 and nationally on September 9. |
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| Trancer-X |
http://www.democracynow.org/article...3/09/16/1559208
Retired chief White House aide Richard Clarke revealed that top White House officials approved the evacuation of 140 influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama Bin Laden, days after the Sept. 11 attacks at a time when all commercial and private flights were grounded. We speak with Vanity Fair reporter Craig Unger who broke the story.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! As we move to another excerpt from Vice President Dick Cheney's statement this week, some might call it Lie Number Two. Let's take a listen.
TIM RUSSERT: Vanity Fair Magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to leave our air space and were never investigated by the F.B.I., and that departure was approved by high level administration. Do you know anything about that?
DICK CHENEY: I don't, but a lot of folks from that part of the world left in the aftermath of 9/11 because they were worried about public reaction here in the United States or that somehow they might be discriminated against. So we have had especially since the attacks in Riyadh in May of this year by the Saudi government great support and cooperation in going after terrorists, especially Al Qaeda. I think the Saudis came to realize as a result of the attacks of last May, that they were as much of a target as we are, that Al Qaeda did have a foothold inside Saudi Arabia, many of the members of the organization are from there, that there have been private individuals in Saudi Arabia who provided significant financial support and assistance, that they're facilitators and operators working inside Saudi Arabia to support the Al Qaeda network. And the Saudis have been, let's say in the last several months, very good partners in helping us go after people in the Al Qaeda organization.
AMY GOODMAN: Dick Cheney speaking this Sunday. Well in the days after the September 11th attacks, former Vice President Al Gore was grounded, former President Bill Clinton was grounded, planes were forced down in mid-flight, including one carrying a heart to be transplanted to a deathly-ill cardiac patient. American skies were empty, yet at the same time 140 Saudis were effectively chaperoned out of the country, the allegation is, by the U.S. government. Among them, they weren't just any Saudis, were several dozen members of the bin Laden family. How is this possible? Well this month retired Chief White House Aide Richard Clarke revealed that top White House officials approved the evacuation of 140 influential Saudis including members of the Osama bin Laden family two days after the September 11th attacks at a time when all commercial and private flights were grounded. Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the attacks writes in the new issue of "Vanity Fair" that the F.B.I. claimed none of the Saudis could be linked to the attacks, which were carried out by 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi. The "New York Times" reports this is the first public acknowledgement that the White House approved the controversial evacuation plan. We're joined by Craig Unger who is the reporter on this piece for "Vanity Fair" and author of the forthcoming book "House of Bush, House of Saud". Can you explain what Vice President Cheney was saying he did not know about?
CRAIG UNGER: Well, it's interesting the administration has not commented at all on this. Colin Powell was also asked about it the previous week, and he sort of said well, we orchestrated something, but I don't really know the details. I think what's really, really important here is, for the first time there have been rumors of this departure beforehand of the Saudi repatriation, but for the first time we know that Saudis were in the air when American air space was locked down. This was the greatest national security crisis possibly in the history of the United States, and American skies were emptier than at any time since the days of the Wright brothers. Why is it that the Saudis were the most privileged people in the United States including members of the bin Laden family. In any normal criminal investigation, even if it's a common place murder, it is normal to question the friends and relatives of the suspect, and here you had roughly 24 members of the bin Laden family who left without being interrogated or interviewed, and it really calls into question why the administration has been so soft on the Saudis. 15 out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. Increasingly we've learned since 9/11 about a fairly big Saudi role in terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: What was your reaction to Vice President Cheney's comment on "Meet the Press" this Sunday?
CRAIG UNGER: Well, reporting on this administration can be quite difficult because you don't really get much response. I tried the White House again and again. I had roughly eight or ten conversations with them. They would never speak to me on the record. It was always on background, and then they denied that any such flights took place. Cheney himself simply says, I don't know. Well, the White House is either responsible or it's not responsible for this. or it's irresponsible, but other flights that were in the air at the same time that violated the lock down were forced down by the American Air Force. You even had, as you mentioned, a man awaiting a heart transplant, his heart, his replacement heart was, and medical team with it, was forced down in mid-air. Why is it that there was this huge, huge rush to get the Saudis out? Officially the Saudis have said, and to some extent what Cheney said is there was a fear on the part of Saudis that there would be retribution by angry Americans. Now there may have been such fear. At the same time, I never heard any incidents of mobs of angry Americans storming and actually threatening the Saudis.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Craig Unger who did the piece in "Vanity Fair" where a White House, well, explain exactly who Richard Clarke is. This story has certainly been surfacing since September 11th. but it is first time you've had any kind of White House confirmation that the White House was involved in flying many members of the bin Laden family out, as well as more than 100 Saudis. Also the question of whether they were questioned at all. This is not about guilt, but it's about getting information.
CRAIG UNGER: Richard Clarke was former White House counter-terrorism czar. He began in the administration of the elder George Bush, he survived through the Clinton years and continued to rise. Then he was in the administration of the current President George Bush, though he has since left and is now running a consulting firm in Virginia. But he is a man who is really considered nonpartisan, he's his own man. He speaks for himself. His integrity is rather unquestioned. And I think partly because he had left the administration, he was far more candid than people I've been able to interview within the administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the subject of your next book which is the link between the Bushes, the House of Bush and House of Saud, going back to the trip of George Bush Sr., James Baker, representing the Carlisle group meeting with the Saudi family.
CRAIG UNGER: One thing that I think people have not explored, and this is what I hope will come out in my book next spring, is there's been a long term relationship between the Bush family and Saudis that really dates back more than 20 years when the elder Bush was Vice President. He was very close friends with Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States. He's been ambassador more than 20 years. He is a member of the Royal House of Saud, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. He is the nephew of King Fahd, his father, Prince Sultan is Defense Minister. And they were very, very close friends during the 1980's. Prince Bandar was actually active in the Iran-Contra scandal helping funnel money to the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980's in which Vice President Bush was then involved. Most recently, the Saudis also been active in some of the oil companies owned by President Bush, such as Harkin Energy in which President Bush was a member of the board of directors, Saudis came in to sort of help bail them out in the late 1980's. And most recently you have the Carlisle Group, which is a giant private equity firm in Washington D.C. It started in the late 80's. Now it's worth over $16 billion, and its principals and key figures include many of the great figures of the Reagan-Bush era. There's former President Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker, there's Richard Darmon, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan-Bush era, Frank Carlucci, he was Secretary of Defense, former Prime Minister John Manger of England are all associated with in one way or another with the Carlisle Group. They bought up many, many defense companies. I think a lot of people may not know what a private equity firm is, but essentially they get involved in financial transactions such as leveraged buyouts, venture capital, real estate deals, they buy and sell companies. They try to buy them cheap, turn them around and sell them in three to five years. And they raise money from both private investors of extremely high net worth and institutions like state pension funds. Well, much of their business went on with Saudi Arabia. and in the
AMY GOODMAN: In fact the bin Ladens had millions sunk into the Carlisle Group forced only to remove it or at least that's as much as we know after September 11th with the embarrassment of Bush being one of their main ambassadors, Bush Sr. and James Baker, etc. and bin Laden's funding this company. CRAIG UNGER: Right. In fact on September 11th itself, the Carlisle Group was having a meeting that morning at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C., and one of the bin Laden members, whose company has invested in Carlisle was present while the attacks were taking place, as was Secretary of State James Baker. AMY GOODMAN: And George Bush had just flown out earlier, President George Bush, Sr. Last question, the response at Logan airport, one of the places where the hijackers had flown from, when they were told that all traffic was grounded, they were to allow a flight that took out Saudis and members of the bin Laden family. The response of the officials at Logan airport.
CRAIG UNGER: Well they were stunned. I spoke with the Director of Aviation, Tom Kinton, and he simply couldn't believe it. He said how is it possible they're letting them go. Virginia Buckingham, who is Head of MassPort, which is the agency that oversaw Logan was just agog. Here they were, the bin Ladens were on the tarmac in the plane. They simply couldn't believe that they were being told to let them go without questioning.
AMY GOODMAN: And at the same time had grounded all other traffic.
CRAIG UNGER: Right. At that point, commercial traffic was just resuming, but private planes had been grounded.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you ,Craig Unger for being with us. That piece in this issue, the latest edition of "Vanity Fair" looking at the Bushes and bin Laden. You are listening to Democracy Now!. After a break we move on to another statement of Dick Cheney this week. Stay with us. |
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| Trancer-X |
I don't think that anything was "hashed out" considering that it was so well hushed up. You can never underestimate the power of denial.
| quote: | | Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke tells Vanity Fair that the Bush administration decided to allow a group of Saudis to fly out of the U.S. just after September 11—at a time when access to U.S. airspace was still restricted and required special government approval. According to other sources, at least four flights with about 140 Saudis, including roughly two dozen members of the bin Laden family, flew to Saudi Arabia that week—without even being interviewed or interrogated by the F.B.I. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
I don't think that anything was "hashed out" considering that it was so well hushed up. You can never underestimate the power of denial. |
Well I suppose that last bit about the FBI not interviewing several people is new news. But one wonders what kind of people those 140 people were ... were they children of parents? Did the FBI want to view them? Were they disregarded as being security threats? Was the FBI denied access to them from orders from the whitehouse? Etc. I would say that the fbi should be obligated to provide a comprehensive account of their actions in order for us to arrive at an accurate conclusion.
And nobody is denying the incident happened ... |
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