Fahrenheit 9/11: Confirming Saudi Flights
June 26, 2004
I was looking over two Washington Post reviews of the Moore film (after the fact, you know) and while they are both positive there’s this wonderful quote from Desson Thomson:
The film also claims that, after planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, and there was a moratorium on all commercial flights around the country, the Bush administration helped many members of the wealthy bin Laden family evacuate the country—by plane. The strong implication is that these evacuations were performed during the flight ban. This may be the film’s iffiest moment, in terms of accuracy, but there’s no easy way to verify or discredit this. If it is indeed true, it’s an explosive revelation.
“No easy way to verify or discredit this?”
How about the records from the Saudi embassy?.
Moore’s point, by the way, is not that Saudis were allowed to fly before anyone else was—it’s that members of the Saudi Royal Family, including members of the bin Laden family, were escorted out of the country before an in-depth investigation had been completed.
The fact that some of these evacuations occurred before the ban on air travel was lifted is not the point, but just the extra twist of the knife.
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June 27th, 2004 at 8:50 pm
The specific flights being mentioned happened AFTER the ban. September 15th was the first day the ban was lifted and that was the day those Saudi flights left for London. However, there is some proof and mutterings that some internal flights within the US were allowed for some Saudi nationals before the 15th. Supposedly, the purpose was to be able to gather a number of Saudi and bin Ladin people in one place… so, they could all prepare to leave the country when the flight ban was over.
Secondly, Richard Clarke has stated he was the one who actually signed off on allowing the Saudis to leave the U.S. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142572/posts
However, I’m not sure if his statements include the 15th dates and/ore the pre-15th dates. In either case, he seems to be pretty satisifed that the FBI had covered their bases before giving a heads up on their leaving. And there’s still a question that the WH should have been on top of this personally.
In the end, from everything that I’ve read… there really wasn’t much to fear from the Saudis that left including the bin Laden family. From all accounts, they all seemed to be very pro-America and anti-terrorism. They wanted to leave the US to avoid Arab backlash with their presence here. However, in the end… everyone would have to agree that it was a politically unwise thing to do… whether Clarke or the administration had anything to do with them being allowed to leave so soon after 9/11.
June 28th, 2004 at 3:42 am
The first two-and-a-half pages of embassy documents I have linked to above show flights with Saudi nationals leaving the US on the 13th and14th. “Here”:http://www.houseofbush.com/bush_saudi_files/new_flights2.php, “here”:http://www.houseofbush.com/bush_saudi_files/new_flights3.php, and “here”:http://www.houseofbush.com/bush_saudi_files/new_flights4.php.
If they’re trying to protect these people, “let’s get them all in one spot” would be a strange way to do it. And further, it was not only politically unwise, it was unwise from a law-enforcement perspective. Shouldn’t we have wanted to question at least some of the people who were ushered out of the country? The complaint is not so much that possibly dangerous people were flown out, it’s that during an investigation witnesses were put out-of-reach of investigators.
June 28th, 2004 at 3:43 am
It would seem that There is something slightly wrong with your Geek test. If you care to know, it was a missing ‘f’ in the background color hex code. At least I assume that it’s an ‘f’ that is missing. I like your sence of humor. hee hee
June 28th, 2004 at 8:38 am
Yeah, I agree that it does seem they were able to move around by plane on both the 13th and 14th. And your source also indicates that these flights were inside the country.
http://www.houseofbush.com/index.php
I absolutely agree that this doesn’t sound like the most reasonable thing to do. I would have preferred if they had kept many of these Saudis in the country for a while and did a little more intensive investigation EVEN if they were already convinced that everyone was ok.
However, I DO have a lot of respect for Clarke and his opinions. By no means is he someone who is infallable or completely objective. However, I really have admired his statements and arguments ever since he spoke in front of the 9/11 commission. And he again iterated today (in response to Moore’s movie) that the FBI did do its job and did clear them of being a danger and/or having any pertinent information. While I wouldnt trust Bush, Cheney or any of their cohorts if they had said… I do feel like I have to give Clarke a slight benefit of doubt.
Here’s his recent statements:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/26/clarke.iraq.ap/
For goodness sakes, the man has been VERY critical of the Bush administration. Why would he hold back on criticizing the administration about these flights unless he truly didn’t think they were a major issue.
In the end, I do agree that the flights are a “Whaaa??”, but I also believe that more (excuse the pun!) is being made out of it than what really happened.