Bush and the Saudis

[Ironside]

On Sept. 13, 2001, the U.S. imposed a nationwide no-fly zone, and yet more than 140 individuals were not only exempt from this rule, they also were permitted to leave the country.

Nearly all were Saudi, and roughly two dozen were kin to the man who had just orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks: Osama bin Laden. What kind of intelligence failure allowed this to happen? Were these individuals seriously questioned? Who allowed them to leave? Given that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, what was the rush in squandering what may have been a potential intelligence mother lode?

More here!

[PatriotsUnite]

You implied that 140 people violated the grounding of all aircraft in the US, and many were Saudis relaled to UBL.

Ridiculous. Forgoet the Bash-Bush leftist article, show me primary source information supporting that claim, and I will listen. And FYI, The New York Times or a blog are not primary sources of information. Flight schedules and official governement records that can demonstrate the claim are.

[MO]

It looks to me like the person responsible for flying Saudi citizen out of the US after 9-11 was none other than Richard Clarke.

At a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing last year, Richard Clarke, who has headed the National Security Council’s counterterrorism security group, said: “What happened was that shortly after 9-11, when it became clear that most of the terrorists of 9-11 were Saudis, the Saudi government feared that there would be retribution and vigilantism in the United States against Saudis. That seemed to be a reasonable fear.”<br>
Clarke said this kind of thing is done “all the time,” adding he organized similar flights to help Americans abroad.

“The list of personnel that were being evacuated was provided to the FBI,” Clarke said. “We asked the FBI to see if there was anyone on the evacuation list that they wanted to detain and question. And the FBI told us there was no one on the list that they wanted to detain.”<br>
Clarke said there were members of bin Laden’s family on a flight leaving the country, but added that the family “is enormous” and that “the members of the bin Laden family who were living in the United States, [those] we were aware of.”<br>
“Without going into more in open testimony, let me just say we were aware there were members of the bin Laden family living in the United States, and had they been doing anything wrong we would have known about it. Let me stop there,”
Clarke said.

Waxman argued that Clarke’s testimony at another hearing does not match media accounts in which “both the FBI and the State Department have denied involvement in facilitating flying the Saudi citizens out of the country.”<br>
The lawmaker also requested information on who contacted the administration to request an evacuation of Saudi citizens, on who coordinated the transportation and on specifics about the flights.

Mark Corallo, Department of Justice spokesperson, said: “As with any request from Congress, we will review Congressman Waxman’s letter,” declining to comment further.

www.hillnews.com/news/021104/waxman.aspx

[PatriotsUnite]

And too, funny! Clarke did it... After all the "debate" over his credibility, in the end it was him! LOL