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BCE and the Saudis
When congressional investigators issued their report on 9/11… there were 28 pages missing. 28 pages of evidence that the Saudi government funded the terrorists who killed nearly 3000 Americans.
The Facts:
"Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it. The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said.
[Source: New York Times, 7/26/03]
"Well, what they did is we submitted a report which had a 27-page section on this issue of the Saudi connections to terrorists. Guess what part of the report was totally censored? That's it."
[Source: Sen. Bob Graham, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on CNN's "Inside Politics," 9/8/04]
"Americans, plainly, have misgivings about the Saudi kingdom, doubts that only grew when the Bush Administration, led by a President cozier than most to Riyadh, blacked out 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia from Congress's official report on Sept. 11, producing the smell of a cover-up of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history."
[Source: Time, 9/15/03, http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030915/ ]
"Most recently, in July, the administration asked Congress to withhold 28 pages of its official report on 9/11. According to news reports, the classified section charges that there were ties between the hijackers and two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who had financial relationships with members of the Saudi government."
[Source: Craig Unger, Vanity Fair, 10/03]
"The Saudis continue to coddle the terrorists in their midst. They support them financially. They export Wahhabism around the world. The result: radicalized warriors bent on our destruction. Equally distressing is the Bush administration's willingness to turn a blind eye to the threat. When Congress released its official 9/11 report, 28 pages dealing with the Saudis were blacked out."
[Source: Editorial, Daily News (New York), 9/11/03]
"They're [Republican and Democratic senators are] right; the White House should release the 28 pages that were blacked out in the 900-page report, or at least some of them, ending the controversy and giving the Saudis a chance to defend themselves against cries of a cover-up of Saudi complicity in the attacks… Americans are overdue for answers to the questions that the pages apparently address -- whether dollars intended to support religious and charitable activities in Saudi Arabia ended up funding terrorism, and whether it was more than a stunning coincidence that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The Bush administration has a troubling habit of cloaking information that should be made public. In any case, fear of embarrassment is not a justifiable reason to classify documents, especially when their content can help explain how terrorists came to kill 3,000 Americans."
[Source: editorial, Wichita (KS) Eagle, 7/31/03]
"In our final report of the House/Senate joint inquiry into 9/11, we had a 27-page section of the report which laid out in detail this Saudi connection through al-Bayoumi and others to the terrorists. All of that was censored by the president."
[Source: Sen. Bob Graham, CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," 9/9/04]
"Significant portions of virtually every section of the report had been censored. I agreed that several of the censored areas were redacted for the right national security reasons. However, there was one area that did not need to be kept secret, and it was the one area where the White House simply refused to relent. This was, not surprisingly, the section of the report that related to the Saudi government and the assistance that government gave to some and possibly all of the September 11 terrorists. This section had been redacted in its entirety, all twenty-seven pages."
[Source: "Intelligence Matters," by Sen. Bob Graham, released 2004]
"The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document."
[Source: Los Angeles Times, 8/2/03]
The Facts:
"Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it. The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said.
[Source: New York Times, 7/26/03]
"Well, what they did is we submitted a report which had a 27-page section on this issue of the Saudi connections to terrorists. Guess what part of the report was totally censored? That's it."
[Source: Sen. Bob Graham, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on CNN's "Inside Politics," 9/8/04]
"Americans, plainly, have misgivings about the Saudi kingdom, doubts that only grew when the Bush Administration, led by a President cozier than most to Riyadh, blacked out 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia from Congress's official report on Sept. 11, producing the smell of a cover-up of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history."
[Source: Time, 9/15/03, http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030915/ ]
"Most recently, in July, the administration asked Congress to withhold 28 pages of its official report on 9/11. According to news reports, the classified section charges that there were ties between the hijackers and two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who had financial relationships with members of the Saudi government."
[Source: Craig Unger, Vanity Fair, 10/03]
"The Saudis continue to coddle the terrorists in their midst. They support them financially. They export Wahhabism around the world. The result: radicalized warriors bent on our destruction. Equally distressing is the Bush administration's willingness to turn a blind eye to the threat. When Congress released its official 9/11 report, 28 pages dealing with the Saudis were blacked out."
[Source: Editorial, Daily News (New York), 9/11/03]
"They're [Republican and Democratic senators are] right; the White House should release the 28 pages that were blacked out in the 900-page report, or at least some of them, ending the controversy and giving the Saudis a chance to defend themselves against cries of a cover-up of Saudi complicity in the attacks… Americans are overdue for answers to the questions that the pages apparently address -- whether dollars intended to support religious and charitable activities in Saudi Arabia ended up funding terrorism, and whether it was more than a stunning coincidence that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The Bush administration has a troubling habit of cloaking information that should be made public. In any case, fear of embarrassment is not a justifiable reason to classify documents, especially when their content can help explain how terrorists came to kill 3,000 Americans."
[Source: editorial, Wichita (KS) Eagle, 7/31/03]
"In our final report of the House/Senate joint inquiry into 9/11, we had a 27-page section of the report which laid out in detail this Saudi connection through al-Bayoumi and others to the terrorists. All of that was censored by the president."
[Source: Sen. Bob Graham, CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," 9/9/04]
"Significant portions of virtually every section of the report had been censored. I agreed that several of the censored areas were redacted for the right national security reasons. However, there was one area that did not need to be kept secret, and it was the one area where the White House simply refused to relent. This was, not surprisingly, the section of the report that related to the Saudi government and the assistance that government gave to some and possibly all of the September 11 terrorists. This section had been redacted in its entirety, all twenty-seven pages."
[Source: "Intelligence Matters," by Sen. Bob Graham, released 2004]
"The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document."
[Source: Los Angeles Times, 8/2/03]
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