"Out, out damn spot!"
Alexander Bolton, The Hill: The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the administration’s refusal to answer questions on the sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting with a group of Democratic senators, according to several Democratic
sources....Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she
asked Hamilton and Lehman if they were able to find
out who in the administration authorized the Saudi
Arabian flights.
“Who did this? Why would the Saudis want to get out of
the country? They said [those questions have] been
part of their inquiry and they haven’t received
satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing,” Boxer
said.
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http://www.thehill.com/news/051804/binladen.aspx
Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.?
By Alexander Bolton
The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001.
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of
the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the
administration’s refusal to answer questions on the
sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting
with a group of Democratic senators, according to
several Democratic sources.
However, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a
Republican appointee who also attended the meeting,
said in an e-mail to The Hill that he told the
senators the White House has been fully cooperative.
Democrats suspect President Bush, who met privately
with the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, on the morning of Sept. 13,
2001, may have personally authorized the controversial
flights, several of which took place when all other
U.S. commercial air travel had been halted.
The White House communications office did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
If Bush or members of his inner circle are shown to
have approved the flight of the prominent Saudi
Arabian citizens, it could be damaging to Bush, who
has staked his re-election campaign in large measure
to his carefully built image as the steady leader of
the war against terrorism.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she asked Hamilton
and Lehman if they were able to find out who in the
administration authorized the Saudi Arabian flights.
“Who did this? Why would the Saudis want to get out of
the country? They said [those questions have] been
part of their inquiry and they haven’t received
satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing,” Boxer
said.
Another Democrat in the meeting who confirmed Boxer’s
account reported that Hamilton said, “We don’t know
who authorized it. We’ve asked that question 50
times.”
Boxer said she obtained a commitment from Hamilton
that the commission will state in its final report if
the White House refused to answer questions about who
authorized the Saudi flights after the 2001 attacks.
Hamilton, who was traveling to New York for commission
hearings scheduled for today and tomorrow, could not
be reached for comment.
Al Felzenberg, the commission’s spokesman, declined to
comment because he said he was not familiar with the
discussions with the Democratic senators.
Last month, the Sept. 11 commission released a
statement declaring that six chartered flights that
rushed the Saudi citizens out of the country were
handled properly by the Bush administration.
In a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press,”
Prince Bandar said he did not discuss with Bush the
need to evacuate Saudi citizens from the U.S. after
Sept. 11. He said he asked the FBI for permission.
However, John Iannarelli, the FBI’s spokesman on
counterterrorism activities, has denied the FBI had
any “role in facilitating these flights one way or
another.”
Bill Harvey, a member of the Families Steering
Committee, which represents the families of the
victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, said the lack of
White House cooperation on identifying who authorized
the Saudi flights, fit into a pattern.
Pressure from the Families Steering Committee was one
of several factors that prompted the White House to
agree to the creation of the Sept. 11 commission.
“I stopped being surprised about this a long time
ago,” said Harvey, whose wife died in the attack on
the World Trade Center. “They’ve not been cooperative.
There’s cooperation and then there’s cooperation. Are
they doing things under possible threat of subpoena?
Yes. Are they actively fulfilling the spirit of the
commission’s requests? No.”
“The White House was opposed to the formation of this
commission in the first place,” said Harvey. “They did
everything to neuter it. Earlier this spring when we
tried to get more time for [the commission to complete
its report], the White House was an obstacle.”
On the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2001, three Saudi men in
their early 20s flew in a Lear jet from Tampa, Fla.,
to Lexington, Ky., where they boarded a Boeing 747
with Arabic writing on it waiting to take them out of
the country. The flight from Tampa to Lexington was
first reported in the Tampa Tribune in October 2001.
Earlier that day, the FAA had issued a notice that
private aviation was banned and that three private
planes that had violated the ban had been forced to
land by military aircraft, according to an article
late last year in Vanity Fair.
The flight from Tampa to Lexington was one of several
flights that Saudi Arabian citizens took in the
immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, when the rest of the
country was prohibited from flying. Many of the Saudis
were members of the Saudi royal family or the bin
Laden family.
The New York Times has reported that bin Laden family
members were driven or flown under FBI supervision to
a secret meeting in Texas and then to Washington, from
where they left the country when airports were allowed
to open Sept. 14, 2001.
Overall, close to 140 Saudis left the U.S. days after
the attacks, even though 15 of the 19 terrorists who
carried out the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudi Arabian.
By contrast, prominent Americans such as former
President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore
were stranded overseas during the crisis because of
the freeze on air travel, Craig Unger wrote in his
2004 book, House of Bush, House of Saud.
Bin Laden’s family has long disassociated itself from
Osama bin Laden, head of the al Qaeda terrorist
network, which was behind the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11. The family has condemned the attacks.
Nevertheless, many critics believe that law
enforcement officials should have questioned the
family members for any leads they might have been able
to provide about bin Laden’s whereabouts, his
connection to the attacks, or about possible future
attacks.
The commission is scheduled to deliver its final
report at the end of July.