About That Flight

According to newly obtained documents - through FOIA - by the Conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, eight days after September 11, 2001, "A 727 PLANE LEFT LAX, RYAN FLT #441 TO ORLANDO, FL W/ETA OF 4-5PM. THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN."

[...] Moreover, the documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation of the Saudi flights. For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the "Bin Laden Family Flight"). On another document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight. [...]

But my favorite part of this whole FBI OBL farce is as follows:

"Incredibly, the FBI had previously redacted Osama bin Laden's name from the records in order "to protect privacy interests.""

Can you say fuck you very much?

At least this might finally explain a nagging problem I have had with the FBI's most wanted poster of OBL, which makes no mention of September 11, 2001 among the crimes OBL is wanted for:

"Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world."

Who has been fired for these oversights and likely criminal negligence, at best? Anyone? Apparently no one needs to be, seeing as how the US media is busy chasing Paris Hilton in and out of jail.

  Huffington Post

“Eight days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Osama bin Laden possibly charters a flight to whisk his family out of the country, and it’s not worth more than a luggage search and a few brief interviews?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Clearly these documents prove the FBI conducted a slapdash investigation of these Saudi flights. We’ll never know how many investigative leads were lost due to the FBI’s lack of diligence.”

U.S. District Court Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the FBI to resubmit “proper disclosures” to the Court and Judicial Watch, having previously criticized the adequacy of redaction descriptions, the validity of exemption claims, and other errors in the FBI’s disclosures.

  Judicial Watch

We'll probably never know, either, on whose orders the FBI exercised less than due diligence investigating the 9/11 terror attacks. Somebody told them to keep their hands off these flight passengers. We do know that when Bush came into the presidency, the agency was told to back off investigations of the Saudis. We do know, also, that congressional staffers were prevented by the White House and FBI from questioning two Saudi nationals on U.S. soil who were known to have given financial support to two of the 9/11 hijackers, prompting Florida Senator Bob Graham to say, "It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety."

As if.

It seems to be unclear just who chartered those six flights that whisked members of the Saudi royals and bin Laden families out of the U.S. while all other planes were grounded. I don't think I need to mention again here the possibility that bin Laden never quit working for or with somebody in the US government.

But, in light of the question of who was ultimately pulling the strings on getting those flights out of the U.S., maybe I do need to mention the latest news about Tony Blair's connections with Bandar Bush.

The UK Guardian newspaper and BBC recently revealed that [Saudi Prince] Bandar personally received over US $2 billion in “marketing fees” from the British defense firm BAE as part of the huge, 1985 al-Yamamah arms deal.

[...]

During the 1980’s, Saudi Arabia sought to buy modern US warplanes. But the US pro-Israel lobby blocked the sale, costing the loss of billions in sales by US industry and 100,000 American jobs. The Reagan Administration advised the Saudis to go buy their warplanes from Britain.

  Information Clearinghouse

Which they did, including supply contracts, all of which came with kick-backs, in the form of ""commissions” to heads of state, generals, and their cronies."

The payoffs were sent to Saudi embassy accounts in the U.S.

But Bandar’s $2 billion set a record for size and venality. Thatcher ordered Bandar’s payments carefully hidden from public gaze. They remained so until recent years when British and American government investigators began questioning secret, multi-million dollar payments to Prince Bandar routed from the UK to the shady Riggs Bank in Washington. Before it was shut down after a series of scandals, Riggs had become one of the favorite handlers of “black” money for pro-US autocratic regimes.

You remember the Riggs Bank, Uncle Jon Bush's money launderer.

The British government (and one assumes the Saudi's U.S. bankers) are refusing to say whether the kickbacks are still being paid. And Tony Blair, in one of his last acts as Prime Minister, refused to allow reopening of an inquiry he quashed last year into Bandar's kickbacks, because such an investigation would "take years, damage the national interest and cost thousands of jobs", and ended the discussion by saying he was "perfectly happy to take responsibility for it." So that settles everything.

What we have here is a big nest of vipers.

Al-Yamamah (the name of the arms deal) means "dove".

And, while we're on the subject of 9/11, does it matter that Marvin Bush was on the board of directors of a company in charge of security at the WTC, Dulles airport and United Airlines, financed through a Kuwaiti-American investment firm, on whose board he also sat?

Black has not heard of Stratesec, but responds that for one company to handle security for both airports and airlines is somewhat unusual. It is also delicate for a security firm serving international facilities to be so interlinked with a foreign-owned company: "Somebody knew somebody," he suggested, or the contract would have been more closely scrutinized.

As Black points out, "when you [a company] have a security contract, you know the inner workings of everything." And if another company is linked with the security company, then "What's on your computer is on their computer."

  What Really Happened

Just sayin'.