"28 Pages" of Congressional Report Alleging Saudi Involvement in 9/11 Finally Released

Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar reportedly provided cash to a "close associate" of two of the hijackers.

Kentannenbaum/Dreamstime.com

With the country distracted by the terror attack in France, Donald Trump's choice of Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, and the Republican National Convention starting in three days, Congress pulled a classic summer Friday afternoon news dump, finally releasing the long-classified "28 pages" of a joint congressional inquiry focused on possible Saudi Arabian government support for the 9/11 hijackers. You can read the whole heavily redacted and blurry-scanned document here. 

The "28 pages" constitute a section of an over-800 page report, and are frustratingly filled with speculative clauses, lots of information attributed to "FBI sources," and unnamed persons with "ties to the Saudi Royal Family."

But the juiciest piece of verifiable information concerns former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. (and close confidant of the Bush family) Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who reportedly provided thousands of dollars to Osama Bassnan, a neighbor of two of the hijackers in San Diego, who allegedly boasted to an "FBI asset that he did more…for the hijackers" than another Saudi-connected associate. 

From page 427 of the report:

One at least one occasion Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar's account. According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan's wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar.

The report also states that the FBI considered Bassnan "an extremist and supporter of Usama Bin Ladin, and has been connected to the Eritrean Islamic Jihad and the Blind Shaykh [sic]." In addition, a CIA memo mentions "Bassnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi Government officials."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.), one of the two senior members of House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, "I hope that the release of these pages, with appropriate redactions necessary to protect our nation's intelligence sources and methods, will diminish speculation that they contain proof of official Saudi Government or senior Saudi official involvement in the 9/11 attacks," according to USA Today. The committee's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-Ca.) said in a statement, "It's important to note that this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community."

It may take a closer examination to come to the conclusion that there truly is "no there there," but Bandar's name included in the report is significant no matter what way Congress chooses to spin it. Still, it's no secret that the Saudi government has long supported Wahabbist extremism, has one of the world's worst human rights records, and continues to wage a devastating proxy war (with U.S. support) in Yemen. They remain a problematic ally, at best.

Comments

[Juice]

Bandar Bush?

[GamerFromJump]

Someone paid actual to rant that.

[GamerFromJump]

actual "cash"

[OliviaButcher]

I'm making over 17k dollar a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... http://www.trends88.com

[OliviaButcher]

I'm making over 17k dollar a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... http://www.trends88.com

[LaraGriffin]

My co-worker's step-sister made $14200 the previous week. she gets paid on the laptop and moved in a $557000 condo. All she did was get blessed and apply the guide leaked on this web site.. Go Here.... http://www.trends88.com

[Fist of Etiquette]

The report also states that the FBI considered Bassnan "an extremist and supporter of Usama Bin Ladin...

Changing the spelling of his name, Fisher? What are you trying to pull here. Dig deeper, people, and you'll see that maybe Reason had a hand in 9/11. They did, after all, vote for US president a man whose middle name is Hussein.

[Pay up, Palin's Buttplug!]

I'm on page 425 of the report. "Usama Bin Ladin" is the spelling used in the report.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Yeah keep reading, egghead.

[Suthenboy]

"You can read the whole heavily redacted and blurry-scanned document here. "

If it is heavily redacted then we cant read the whole document. I am surprised they didn't give us 28 pages of coffee stains.

[DOOMco]

What was the document the administration released but was entirely redacted?

[DesigNate]

I am sorely disappointed in your alt-text Anthony. We demand better.

[Knarf the Yenrab]

The entire fucking thing is "juicy." It's one Saudi intelligence asshat after another meeting with, paying the rent of, or throwing parties for a couple of the 9/11 hijackers while the US intelligence apparatus is stonewalled by the Saudi government.

There's no overt smoking gun, but Saudi choad after choad is meeting with and giving money to Saudi-Islamist choad after choad with the clear implication that the Saudi royal family supported and bankrolled the 9/11 attacks. And the scope of the web of Saudi involvement is staggering--embassies, mosques, an entire terrorism-supporting infrastructure established right in our multicultural midst while the federal government begs the Saudis for help. It would be comical if it weren't horrifying.

Our Saudi "allies" and some of HRC and BHO's strongest foreign supporters and sources of funding are our enemy; always have been.

[Knarf the Yenrab]

My favorite bit, page 428:

In 1993, the FBI became aware that Bassnan had hosted a party for the Blind Shaykh at his house in Washington, DC in October 1992. Bassnan has made many laudatory remarks to FBI assets about Bin Ladin, referring to Bin Ladin as the official Khalifate and the ruler of the Islamic world. According to an FBI asset, Bassnan spoke of Bin Ladin "as if he were a god." Bassnan also stated to an FBI asset that he heard that the U.S. Government had stopped approving visas for foreign students. He considered such measures to be insufficient as there are already enough Muslims in the United States to destroy the United States and make it an Islamic state within ten to fifteen years.

[Suthenboy]

Didn't Obumbles lean over and suck the Saudi King's cock once-upon-a-time? I think I saw the video.

[Knarf the Yenrab]

If you want to get your weekend off to a riproaring conspiratorial start, grab a bottle of bourbon and google Khalid al-Mansour Obama Harvard.

[Don'tTreadOnMeChipper]

Why do you say "enemy"? They have been giving the our betters exactly what they needed and asked for.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

So Bandar bin Sultan, the guy who pressured the US into going into Iraq, and who bragged that George W. Bush told him of the decision to invade Iraq before Colin Powell, funded and aided the people behind 9/11.

Why is this starting to look like the Saudis supported this attack just to get us to attack Iraq??

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Saudi Funding seems tied to groups that are used to justify American wars in Shia areas. Iraq. Syria. Yemen. The constant narrative out of Arabia shamelessly parroted by the American media that the Houthis are in league with Iran.

It LOOKS like the Arabians are using the Americans to shatter the power of the Shia.

[ant1sthenes]

That's sort of an open fucking secret. One reason that there was no support for any sort of Persian spring, since it might raise questions as to why we're helping an absolute monarchy attack a democracy.

I don't think it's the government as a whole though, just a corrupt group of bought-off people inside it, like the Clinton loyalists in the various departments. Otherwise, I can't see POTUS undermining them by helping Iran get a nuke, unless it's some 5d chess move to lure Israel into attacking while SA retains plausible deniability.

[Ron]

Just like the Sauds paying the clinton foundation to fuck over Lybia. I'm not making excuses to one crime base on a another teams crime but to point out that Our government has been bought off and paid for for a long time now through all parties. People like to blame the jews but its clear the Sauds are right there paying people off for American to die on their behalf with our dollars.

[Don'tTreadOnMeChipper]

Assuming we have enough nukes to go around, can we bring our boys home now and just see what happens?

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

One of the strongest arguments against conspiracy theories is the extent to which multiple conspirators would have to adhere to their original secrecy agreement in order for the conspiracy to remain a secret. That's how we know we went to the moon: thousands of astronauts, engineers, support personnel, etc would have had to remain mum about the whole affair for the decades since 1969.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

I'm not suggesting that 911 was an inside job, but I do observe that the strongest argument against the conspiracy (large numbers of people keeping secrets in perpetuity) simply does not apply if I am correct in assuming that the minimum number of conspirators (defined as people who knew in advance that the operation was planned) in a possible 911 conspiracy is precisely 1.

[MSimon]

In an open society keeping secrets is done by openly advancing conspiracy theories. Lots and lots of them so that the truth gets lumped in with the falsehoods.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Consider the following scenario. There's this high-level governmental operative named Charney, let's say. He could be highly-placed within the Executive branch perhaps. He has cultivated a relationship with this deep cover spook who has successfully infiltrated Al Qaeda. His spook is told to use his Al Qaeda resources to set up a plot to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, with the expectation that the plot would be called off at the last minute and all of those involved would be rolled up and arrested prior to execution. On the day of the operation, the spook is told to stand down, and that the other accomplices would be soon arrested. The spook retreats to a safe house where he is told to wait until the police action is complete.

[Rockabilly]

The FBI Suspected Bill Kristol's Dad of Consorting With Soviet Spies
Irving Kristol, father to Fox News talking head Bill Kristol, was the intellectual architect of neoconservatism, a fierce anti-communist, and staunch Republican. So why did FBI counterintelligence agents investigate his contacts with a suspected Soviet agent in the 1980s?

The elder Kristol made no secret of his youthful flirtations with socialism. Like many neoconservatives, he was a college Trotskyite who lurched radically rightward after World War II. By 1982, he was universally acknowledged as a chief engine of right-wing thought in American politics and one of the minds behind the Reagan Revolution. Which is why it's so curious that, according to FBI documents obtained by Gawker under the Freedom of Information Act, he was the subject of a five-month FBI counterintelligence investigation in 1988.

http://gawker.com/5703723/the-.....viet-spies

[a better chipper]

They remain a problematic ally, at best.

There's no sugarcoating it.

[CatoTheChipper]

I think that sentence should follow the convention used in the 28 pages; viz,

They remain a problematic "ally", at best.

with emphasis on the scare quotes, "".

Yes, the 28-pages use the scare quotes around ally to describe the relationship of Saudi Arabia with the US.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

It is at this time that Charney has him killed, if need be identifying him to the assassination asset as a double agent who "flipped" to Al Qaeda and had planned to follow through with the some nefarious, yet unknown plan.

Spook doesn't show up, operation goes ahead anyway without him.

One person is left knowing exactly what happened: Charney.

Not saying this is what happened, but I can't find a convincing reason why it couldn't occur, therefore what I'm suggesting is that the strongest argument against 911 being an inside job, volatility of secrets, simply doesn't apply in this scenario.

Thoughts?

[Zeb]

Sounds possible, but unlikely.

[Jake Stone]

Don't say shit like "28 pages...finally released". Tell it like we know it is: "Totally redacted document foisted upon American people to be used as toilet paper".

[Knarf the Yenrab]

The redactions aren't that heavy. This is another one of those "release a bombshell on Friday and have our media lackeys ignore it" strategies.

Releasing and then ignoring hugely important information is the best way to deal with it in the wikileaks era--just pretend that it isn't anything of note and hope the media and public go along.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

None of which changes or invalidates the fundamental teason we don't want to go to war with the Saudis; if we go to war with them, we will win. Then WE will be in charge of Mecca and Medina and burdened with the annual Hadj. I would rather try to install an Orange gvernment in Dublin.

I think that Bush understood this, but I may be wrong. I suppose that Trump might; it's hard to tell what is Trump, what is Trump's hype, and what is the "Trump is the anti-christ" cult that has held sway in segments of the media since the 1980's. I'm pretty sure Shrillary DOESN'T understand this. She has always struck me as formidably stupid.

There may come a time when we HAVE to attack the Saudis. When it comes, hell will be loose and stalking, and the era of a truly Imperial America will be at hand.

[bassjoe]

I don't think we'll ever attack Saudi Arabia. We won't attack them for the foreseeable future because we don't want to scare the oil markets. By the time SA is no longer that important in the oil market, the Saudi royal family will probably be too busy reaping what they have sown at home to export their radicalism abroad.

[Bubba Jones]

Except high oil prices are now good for our economy...

[Jackand Ace]

Good article, and right on point.

It's been known for some time as well. The Saudis have turned a blind eye to terrorism for quite some time. But the Bush's lived the royal family.

[Jackand Ace]

*loved

[ant1sthenes]

We're agreed on something, for once.

[dajjal]

Of course they release it on a Friday right before the weekend and right before a major coup in Turkey to distract attention and of course they make it fuzzy and spread it out over 28 long pages which who has the time to read these days? I mean it's the defining event of the last decade and when we finally get answers they try to sweep it under the rug. Of course, that's our government. Of course. So what's the story in Turkey? And more importantly, we can still bomb ISIS, right?

[nrob]

There is far more than 28 pages worth of information missing from the report...

[mtrueman]

Whatever operations Saudi secret services were conducting in the US, their American counterparts likely would have been part of and even directing. That's what being a client state is all about.