- Between April 1998 and May 2002, some $51-73,000 in checks
and cashier's checks were provided by the Saudi Ambassador to the United
States and his wife to two families in southern California, who in turn
bankrolled at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. The story was investigated
by the 9/11 Commission, but never fully resolved, and remains, to this
day, one of the key unanswered questions concerning the backing for the
worst terrorist attack ever to occur on U.S. soil.
-
- According to numerous news accounts and the records of
the 9/11 Commission, in April 1998, a Saudi national named Osama Basnan
wrote to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., seeking help for his wife,
Majeda Dweikat, who needed surgery for a thyroid condition. Prince Bandar
bin-Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador, wrote a check for $15,000 to Basnan.
Beginning in December 1999, Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar,
began sending regular monthly cashier checks to Majeda Dweikat, in amounts
ranging from $2,000 to $3,500. Many of these checks were signed over to
Manal Bajadr, the wife of Omar al-Bayoumi, another Saudi living in the
San Diego area.
-
- Around New Year's Day 2000, two other Saudi nationals,
Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, arrived at Los Angeles International
Airport, where they were greeted by al-Bayoumi, provided with cash, and
outfitted with an apartment, Social Security ID cards, and other financial
assistance. Al-Bayoumi helped the two Saudi men to enrolled in flight schools
in Florida. Two months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, al-Bayoumi moved
to England, and shortly after that, he disappeared altogether. But before
his disappearance, and within days of the 9/11 attacks, agents of New Scotland
Yard, working in conjunction with the FBI, raided his apartment in England
and found papers hidden beneath the floorboards, according to Newsweek
magazine, that had the phone numbers of several officials at the Saudi
Embassy in Washington. Al-Bayoumi was suspected by the Arab community in
the San Diego area of being an agent of Saudi intelligence, which kept
tabs on Saudi residents in the area, particularly Saudi students attending
college in southern California.
-
- Sources have told EIR researchers that Basnan was also
long suspected of being an agent for Saudi Arabia's foreign intelligence
service. According to the sources, Basnan was arrested for drug possession
in southern California and the Saudi government intervened to get the charges
dropped; Basnan also befriended Alhazmi and Almihdhar prior to their deaths
on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. At one
point, the Basnans, the al-Bayoumis, and the two 9/11 hijackers all lived
at the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego.
-
- Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa denied they played any
role in financing the 9/11 hijackers, and claimed that they were merely
providing charitable assistance to the Saudi community in the United States.
The two co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, Robert
Graham (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), accused the FBI of failing
to fully pursue this "9/11 money trail." Sources told EIR that
the FBI refused to allow the committee to interview the FBI investigators
who had probed the Basnan and al-Bayoumi links.
-
- While Congressional and law enforcement sources insist
to EIR investigators that all available leads were pursued and no compelling
evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11 was established, other U.S. intelligence
sources maintain that many fruitful areas of investigation simply reached
dead-ends before any final conclusions could be drawn. And these sources
report that some of the Al-Yamamah funds, including some funds that passed
through the Riggs Bank accounts in Washington, financed a migration of
Muslim Brotherhood members to the United States, throughout the 1980s and
1990s. That hardly constitutes a smoking gun, these sources emphasize,
but raises serious unanswered questions, particularly in light of the fact
that the official staff reports of the 9/11 Commission featured a detailed
debriefing of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the Sept.
11 attacks, who admitted that he had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood
since he was 16 years old.
-
- =====================
-
- http://www.larouchepub.com/other/editorials/2007/3426cheney_on_ropes.html
-
- This editorial appears in the June 29, 2007 issue of
Executive Intelligence Review.
-
- Cheney on the Ropes
- When the scandal around the huge British defense firm
BAE Systems erupted during the first week in June, Lyndon LaRouche immediately
identified this as a story of colossal importance, which could bring down
Dick Cheney and the imperial Anglo-Dutch Liberal financial apparatus that
stands behind him. A little over two weeks later, we are getting closer
to that point. Consider this chronology:
-
- On Jan. 27, 2007, Truthout.com reported that Vice President
Cheney, during a November 2006 trip to Saudi Arabia, promised his Saudi
interlocutors that he would shut down the official British investigation
of BAE's 20-year bribery, to the tune of $2 billion, of Saudi Prince Bandar
bin-Sultan.
-
- On Dec. 15, 2006, British Attorney General Lord Peter
Goldsmith terminated the ongoing probe of BAE by the Serious Crimes Office.
-
- On June 21, 2007, the Federal Committee on Foreign Investment
in the United States rushed through approval of BAE's takeover of U.S.
defense contractor Armor Holdings.
-
- On June 21, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) issued a press release stating that
Cheney's office has refused to comply with an Executive Order governing
the handling of classified information, and had tried to shut down the
office at the National Archives and Records Administration that sought
to enforce the order. Cheney's office argued that it is "not an entity
within the executive branch" (!), and therefore does not need to comply
with the order.
-
- On June 22, Lord Goldsmith resigned.
-
- Will Cheney be next?
-
- At LaRouche's June 21 webcast (see Feature), he outlined
the bigger story that lies behind the BAE scandal in this post-9/11 world.
There was virtual silence on the subject in the U.S. press, he noted. Until
recently, nothing appeared "even hinting at what has been the ongoing
reality of this Bush Administration, since before the President was sworn
in, in 2001. The world has been living under a system, which is the 9/11
system, which already existed, as I warned at the beginning of 2001, before
President George W. Bush was inaugurated for the first time in January
of 2001. Where I said: The world system has reached the point, that an
onrushing collapse of the system is now in process. We can not determine
exactly when or how this will occur, but we know the following two things:
Number 1, we know that this President and this Presidency can not deal
with this crisis. Therefore, we must expect that the entire world will
be subjected to the kind of thing we experienced in February of 1933, when
Hermann Göring, the man behind the throne, the sort of Dick Cheney
of the Hitler administration, orchestrated the burning of the Reichstag
as a terrorist event. And this terrorist event was used ... to install
Hitler with dictatorial powers....
-
- "And I said then, the danger is that something like
this will occur, under present trends in the United States, and it did
occur: And it was called 9/11.
-
- "Now, without going into the details of what we
know and what we don't know about how 9/11 was orchestrated, we know that
the only means by which this kind of thing is orchestrated, is found in
one location: in a financial complex which is centered in the identity
of the BAE. Now, that's the mystery of 9/11. How it was done, the mechanics,
that's irrelevant. We'll find out. And everybody in and around government
who understands these matters, knows that! And that's where the heat is
here."
-
- Later in the webcast, LaRouche elaborated: "I think
that the relevant scoundrels in the British Isles will probably do something
horrible to Dick Cheney, not because they don't like what he was trying
to do, but because he failed to do it." LaRouche concluded: "Cheney
is in deep kimchee, and those who don't want to impeach Cheney are in deep
kimchee too."
-
- Up to now, elements of the Democratic leadership have
ignored the strong wishes of their constituents, and have blocked the impeachment
of Cheney-which is already on the table, in the form of a resolution by
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). The BAE scandal provides the opportunity
to quickly correct that egregious mistake.
- http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3426bandar_9-11.html
-
-
- This article appears in the June 29, 2007 issue of Executive
Intelligence Review.
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