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President claims he 'cleared the air' with Wahhabi nation over 9/11 charge
 

White House officials claimed President Obama “cleared the air” when he met with King Salman on his visit this week to Saudi Arabia.

Yet the real future of the relationship remains murky, as controversy grows in the United States over Saudi Arabia’s possible support for the 9/11 hijackers and officials in each nation challenge the usefulness of their supposed “ally.”

In a recent interview, former Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turk Al-Faisal questioned the “steadfastness” of American leadership as well as his country’s “dependence” on the United States, suggesting the relationship is something “we have to recalibrate.”

The resulting uncertainty was on full display when Obama received a noticeably cool welcome to Saudi Arabia, with neither the king nor any other high-ranking member of the royal family greeting the president at the airport. Instead, a relatively low official was dispatched in what several media outlets reported as a deliberate snub.

Yet the deeper tensions exposed by the visit were evident to all, as Saudi Arabia has reacted sharply to a bipartisan effort in Congress to declassify 28 pages in the 9/11 Commission Report which could possibly help document Saudi assistance to the hijackers involved in the attack.

In addition, the kingdom has threatened to sell off $750 billion in American assets if Congress passes the legislation.

Obama claims he has not read the classified pages. Even so, it appears he opposes a bill that would allow the victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia’s government, claiming it could expose the American government to similar lawsuits in other countries.

 

Philip Haney slammed the trip and Obama’s actions as yet another example of America’s one-sided relationship with Saudi Arabia.

“Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the terms of our relationship have been continuously defined by the Saudis rather than by the United States,” he told WND.

Haney won numerous awards and commendations during his long career as a Customs and Border Protection officer for analyzing intelligence and producing actionable reports that led to the identification of hundreds of terrorists.

But Haney faced opposition from the politically correct Obama administration, which made him the subject of nine investigations. Haney chronicles his experiences, including his connection to the investigations of the San Bernardino and Boston Marathon terrorist attacks, in the new book, “See Something, Say Nothing.”

Haney argues the American government made a deliberate choice after the September 11 terrorist attacks to overlook Saudi Arabia’s possible involvement in sponsoring terrorism.

“To gain their support in the ‘War on Terror,’ one of the first post-9/11 compromises America made with the Saudis was to redact the 28 pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, thus shielding and/or exonerating them from any involvement or responsibility,” he said. “A second compromise we made with our supposed Wahhabi partners in peace was to ignore their decades-long role in the funding and support of thousands of pro-jihad madrassas throughout the Eastern Hemisphere.”

The veteran counter-terrorism analyst accused the American government of ignoring both morality and national security to protect the interests of those who benefit from the status quo.

“The one-sided quid pro quo arrangement between American and Saudi Arabia is remarkably similar to the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between Turkey and the West to overlook the Armenian Genocide, supposedly for the sake of peace and political and economic stability,” he said. “In fact, President Obama reinforced this viewpoint on April 19, when he stated, ‘A country with a modern and large economy like Saudi Arabia would not benefit from a destabilized global financial market, and neither would the United States.’

“The White House claims legislation to allow Saudi Arabia to be sued for its involvement in 9/11 would mean the end of ‘sovereign immunity.’ If we pause and explore what this revealing statement actually means, we might easily come to the conclusion that no country on earth will ever be held accountable for supporting terrorist attacks and/or regional wars, simply because one country’s ‘terrorist’ is another country’s ‘freedom fighter.'”

Has our own government already surrendered to Islamic jihad? A national security insider uncovers the terrible truth. Philip Haney’s “See Something, Say Nothing” is available for pre-order from the WND Superstore.

Indeed, Haney argued a changing strategic situation is leading Saudi Arabia to actually expand its ties to certain terrorist groups, most notably Hamas. King Salman met with top Hamas leaders in a move described by the New York Times as “the most striking example yet of the new king’s willingness to work with Islamist organizations long considered foes.”

The Hamas meeting was described as an attempt to unite the Arab world against Iran, while at the same time, Obama is moving to repair relations with the Shiite nation.

Thus, as Obama tries to push Saudi Arabia to take stronger action against the Islamic State, the Saudis are more interested in trying to convince Obama to back away from Iran. Saudi commentators were especially outraged by the president’s recent comments Saudi Arabia and Iran needed to “share” the Middle East. And as Obama tries to navigate the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East, Haney argues he’s seemingly forgetting the American people.

“A new report indicates the flight certificate of a bomb maker for al-Qaida was found hidden in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington,” Haney said. “This raises further questions about how directly involved the Saudi government is in sponsoring terrorism against the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is still aggressively lobbying against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, which is sponsored by a bipartisan group of 16 U.S. senators attempting to curtail the ability of countries to invoke sovereign immunity in lawsuits accusing them of supporting terrorism. Specifically, this effort is move designed to help clear the way for U.S. citizens to seek a legal remedy for Saudi Arabia’s alleged complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks.

As one woman whose husband died in the 9/11 attacks put it, “It’s stunning to think our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens.”

Haney says Obama is letting down Americans by refusing to put citizens first.

“It’s time to call Saudi Arabia’s bluff,” he said. “It’s time to stop basing our national security decisions on chronic appeasement of the ‘Guardian of the Holy Places.’ The statements from the White House show the Obama administration is anxious protect the image of Saudi Arabia, even after they deliberately insult him. With falling energy prices and vast untapped American reserves, we are no longer dependent on the kingdom. Now is the time to stop letting them slip away from responsibility for sponsoring terrorism.”

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The best move is to declassify as much of the 28 pages of the report as possible.  Methods and sources are the main items that might still be necessary to classify.  We don't wish anyone to know how the information was obtained, After 16 years, some of the sources might be dead.  However, I don't wish to read about those who trusted us to wind up on Chop Chop square in Riyadh on a Thursday becoming a head shorter.

jtdavis posted:

Obama ain't handling the situtation real well, but who let the Saudis fly out of the US after 9/11 on the only air planes allowed to fly?

  1. Fact Check
  2. Flights of Fancy

Flights of Fancy

Did a secret flight whisk Saudis and Osama bin Laden's relatives out of the USA during a ban on air travel?

Claim:   Secret flights whisked bin Laden family members and Saudi nationals out of the U.S. immediately after September 11 while a general ban on air travel was still in effect, and before the FBI had any opportunity to question any of the passengers.

Status:   False. 

 
 

 September 30, 2001

THE FAMILY

Fearing Harm, bin Laden Kin Fled From U.S.

By PATRICK E. TYLER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 – In the first days after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Saudi Arabia supervised the urgent evacuation of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's extended family from the United States, fearing that they might be subjected to violence.

In his first interview since the attacks, Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, also said that private planes carrying the kingdom's deputy defense minister and the governor of Mecca, both members of the royal family, were grounded and initially caught up in the F.B.I. dragnet. Both planes, one jumbo jet carrying 100 family members, and the other 40, were eventually allowed to leave when airports reopened and passports were checked.

Mr. bin Laden is estranged from his family. One of his two brothers in the United States called the Saudi Embassy frantically looking for protection, the ambassador said. The brother was sent to a room in the Watergate Hotel and told not to open the door.

Most of Mr. bin Laden's relatives were attending high school and college. They are among the 4,000 Saudi students in the United States. King Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy here saying there were "bin Laden children all over America" and ordered, "Take measures to protect the innocents," the ambassador said.

The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks. Many were terrified, fearing they could be "lynched," after hearing news reports of sporadic violence against Muslims and Arab-Americans.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/010930nytimes

Last edited by Bestworking

So jt, again, it would serve you well to have the facts before you posted. If you keep listening to the slanted liberal media, and don't bother to check for the truth, you will always be in the dark. Below is part of it, go to the site for all of it.

=====================================

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp

The ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were mostly either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not generally resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.)

The claim that bin Laden family members (and other Saudis) were allowed to secretly fly out of the U.S. and back to Saudi Arabia while a government-imposed ban on air travel was in effect, all without any intervention by the FBI, has since been negated by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission"). In their final report, the commission noted:

Three questions have arisen with respect to the departure of Saudi nationals from the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: (1) Did any flights of Saudi nationals take place before national airspace reopened on September 13, 2001? (2) Was there any political intervention to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals? (3) Did the FBI screen Saudi nationals thoroughly before their departure?

First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.

Second, we found no evidence of political intervention. We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of [National Security Council official] Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals ... The President and Vice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media. None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.

Third, we believe that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United State on charter flights. The Saudi government was advised of and agree to the FBI's requirements that passengers be identified and checked against various databases before the flights departed. The Federal Aviation Administration representative working in the FBI operations center made sure that the FBI was aware of the flights of Saudi nationals and was able to screen the passengers before they were allowed to depart.

The FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures. They concluded that none of the passengers was connected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion. Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.

 

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