Arming the Terrorists

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

[...]

Yesterday, anti-corruption campaigners began a legal action to overturn the decision to halt the case [effected by Tony Blair’s pressure on attorney general, Lord Goldsmith]. They want the original investigation restarted, arguing the government had caved [in to] blackmail.

[...]

Bandar's payments were published in the Guardian and Switzerland subsequently launched a money-laundering inquiry into the Saudi arms deal. The US department of justice has launched its own investigation under the foreign corrupt practices act into the British money received in the US by Bandar while he was ambassador to Washington.

Prince Bandar yesterday did not contest a US court order preventing him from taking the proceeds of property sales out of the country. The order will stay in place until a lawsuit brought by a group of BAE shareholders is decided.

UK Guardian

This comes as no surprise to many who were claiming these threats were happening back when the BAE investigation was news in the summer of 2007, and it also doesn’t mean Bandar won’t be getting arms from the U.S.

January 14, 2008

[...]

administration said it notified Congress of its intention to offer the Saudis a controversial package of advanced weaponry as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with Gulf Arab allies.

The deal has raised concerns in Israel and among some of its allies about the military balance of power in the region.

Reuters

02/13/2008

[...]

It’s not often that Washington Republicans will go out of their way to attack the world’s largest oil supplier and Bush administration ally, Saudi Arabia. But that’s precisely what three GOP House members did yesterday in an attempt to prevent a planned $123 million arms sale to the strategically placed monarchy.

[...]

Reps. Frank Wolf (Va.), Zack Wamp (Tenn.) and Sue Myrick (N.C.) wondered yesterday who will subsequently rein in the Saudis. Between the three of them, they managed to take shots at the country’s religious intolerance, its support for Wahhabist maddrassas, and its dissemination of textbooks that encourage violence against non-Muslims. (Did they forget to mention that 15 of the 19 terrorists responsible for the 9-11 attacks were Saudi nationals? They did not.)

[...]

Though a House resolution to overturn the Saudi sale has gained significant support (80 Democrats and 13 Republicans have signed on), it hit a brick wall in the form of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Cal.), who showed no support for blocking the deal. In a complicating twist, Lantos died Monday and will be honored at the Capitol tomorrow.

Wamp acknowledged that the push to kill the sale has no chance of gaining traction so immediately following Lantos’ death. Still, the Tennessee Republican had some words of warning for the country when the deal goes through.

"You know, we’ve tried to buy friends many times in this country’s history," he said. "And you just don’t—you just can’t do that. And I’m afraid economic interests trump our national security interests often.

Washington Independent

You think? Surely Bandar Bush shares his bribe booty with the rest of the family. Bribe booty I will remind you that was deposited into his account at the infamously convicted DC money-laundering Riggs Bank where none other than was CEO and president of Riggs Investment.

02/15/08

[...]

The U.S. Congress failed to block the sale of 900 satellite-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia by Feb. 14, the date the sale goes through without congressional action. But lawmakers who oppose the deal say they still have a chance to halt it.
The sale can be blocked simply by passing legislation opposing it, said an aide to Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.

That means that until the JDAMs are turned over to the Saudis, the sale can be halted, Wamp’s aide said

But to do so, the opponents would need to gain enough support in the House and Senate to override a presidential veto — two-thirds of the members in each house. About 250 House members have opposed the sale at various times since it was proposed last summer. Two-thirds of the House is 287.

Defense News

Good luck with that.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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'.