“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government. Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

John F Lehman — Republican member of the 9/11 commission

Prince Bandar

The so-called “28 pages” report suggests a much larger web of connections between al-Qaeda and the Saudi royal family than had previously been known. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

UPDATE — On February 24 2017, former FBI Mark Rossini posted the following comment on this blog:

“Thank you for continuing to care and never forget. The only logical explanation for the suppression of the CIR of Special Agent Douglas J. Miller, was to allow the Saudi Mabahith and the CIA to run a joint operation in the USA.

For this op, the Mabahith was given authority to operate on USA soil and the FBI was willfully and purposely excluded by the CIA. Please read the attached document for more. Thank you. Mark T. Rossini”

So, with his kind permission, I decided to repost parts of Rossini’s analysis on this blog. I certainly agree with Rossini that these questions should be investigated a bit deeper…

RELATED POST: 9/11 — Two Unanswered Questions

Meanwhile… On  February 10 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo honored the Saudi Crown Prince with the CIA ‘George Tenet’ Medal during a meeting in Riyadh.

RELATED POST: Saudi Crown Prince Awarded the CIA ‘George Tenet’ Medal of Honor

The CIA handed the Crown Prince (Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud ) the medal for ‘his distinct intelligence-related counter-terrorism work and his contributions to ensure international peace and security’.

Well, the prince did not go unpunished… On June 21 2017, Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud was relieved of all positions and replaced as Crown Prince — by royal decree — in favor of Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

END of UPDATE

The release Friday of a long-classified congressional report on possible ties between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorist plot has the potential to do lasting damage to the US relationship with the oil-rich Arab kingdom.

Prince Bandar

According to the report, at least $15,000 went directly from Prince Bandar’s bank account in Washington to the family of a Saudi expatriate, suspected of being a Saudi government spy, who organized a support network in California for two of the 9/11 hijackers while they were living in San Diego in the year before the attacks.

The report also reveals that a phone log maintained by Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda operative captured in 2002 in Pakistan, included the unlisted phone number for a Colorado company that managed affairs at Prince Bandar’s home in the mountain resort city of Aspen, as well as the phone number for a bodyguard who worked under Bandar at the Saudi embassy in Washington.

It had previously been reported that Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa bin Sultan, who was born into royalty like her husband, had paid out tens of thousands of dollars to the wife of the same Saudi expatriate in California, Osama Basnan.

For the first time in the public record, the 28 pages identify exactly how much money went from Princess Haifa to Basnan’s family: $74,000 in cashier’s checks from February 1999 to May 2002.

Investigators for both the congressional investigation and the 9/11 commission suspected, but were never able to prove, that much of that money ended up in the hands of the two hijackers in San Diego: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

RELATED POST: 9/11 : Former FBI Mark Rossini Blames the CIA

RELATED POST: Saudi Crown Prince Awarded the CIA ‘George Tenet’ Medal of Honor

RELATED POST: 9/11 — Former CIA Boss John McLaughlin: “So, that’s it.”

RELATED POST: “28 Pages” – Former CIA Robert Baer: ‘We Deserve The Truth’

REFERENCE

Release of 9/11 report could strain US relationship with Saudi Arabia

=

9/11 — The “28 Pages” Report

One Year Ago — 9/11: The “28 Pages” Report