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CIA ERASES DETAILS OF SAUDI TIES TO AL QAIDA

CIA erases details of Saudi ties to Al Qaida
Middle East Newsline

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has eliminated from a congressional report significant details of the ties of the Saudi royal family to Al Qaida.

Congressional sources said the 800-page report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was delayed for months because of arguments with the Bush administration over details of Saudi involvement with Al Qaida. The sources said the administration did not want the report by the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks to reopen wounds with Riyad amid its new cooperation with the U.S.-led war against Al Qaida.

The report, which could be released over the next week, will discuss how the United States underestimated Saudi links to Al Qaida. The investigation by the 10-member commission reviewed the FBI failure to detect Saudi aid to two of the 19 Al Qaida hijackers in September 2001.

"There's little doubt that much of the funding of terrorist groups -- whether intentional or unintentional -- is coming from Saudi sources," John Lehman, a member of the independent commission, told a congressional hearing earlier this month.

The sources said the congressional study was completed in December 2002. The administration kept the report for six months and the commission said the White House withheld documents required for the investigation.

Last week, former Senate Select Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham quoted the report as saying that Al Qaida has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists. The report said many of those trained were sent around the world, including the United States.

"We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some were placed inside the United States," Graham, a Florida Democrat, said. "Some of them are in the United States today."

Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, has criticized the Bush administration for delaying the release of the report. The senator said the Bush administration has approved inclusion of the Al Qaida training estimate in the final report.

"We allowed Al Qaida to regroup and regenerate," Graham said. "They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far none of it in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia."

Over the weekend, the United States launched another effort to promote human rights in Saudi Arabia. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Lorne Craner arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss the human rights situation in the kingdom.

 

SEPTEMBER 11 PAIR 'HELPED BY SAUDI AGENT'

September 11 pair 'helped by Saudi agent'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Daily Telegraph, U.K.
July 22, 2003

A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week.

The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud.

According to Newsweek magazine, the 900-page report will document extensive ties between Omar al-Bayoumi and the two hijackers after they arrived in San Diego in 2000.

Al-Bayoumi, who will be identified as a possible Saudi government agent, assisted Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, who were among the five al-Qa'eda operatives who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon.

Any evidence that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent would be explosive, transforming the September 11 investigation into an inquiry into possible state-sponsored terrorism.

The White House has resisted calls for the whole report to be published, insisting that a 28-page section dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments be kept secret.

"They are protecting a foreign government," said Senator Bob Graham, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and oversaw the inquiry, conducted jointly by the Senate and House of Representative's intelligence committees.

Robert Mueller, who took over as FBI director just before September 11, has already been criticised because his agents did not investigate al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi even though they were living in the house of an FBI informant.

The report is also expected to criticise the Pentagon for failing to carry out air strikes against al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan before September 11 and the CIA for not telling the FBI about the presence of al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi at a meeting of terrorists in Malaysia.

It is the FBI, however, which is due to get the harshest verdict. The FBI's informant also had contact with Hani Hanjour, another hijacker, but the bureau did not discover he was in contact with al-Qa'eda operatives despite his regular conversations with his handler.

One congressional investigator described the report as "a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism".

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis but President George W Bush has consistently sought to play down Saudi Arabia's links to terrorism.

Bayoumi was enrolled in a graduate business course at Aston University in Birmingham and was arrested in Britain after the September 11 attacks. He had left America two months before the attacks.

Records of telephone calls to diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Washington were found but he was released without charge after a week. He was charged with visa fraud in America but this was not an extraditable offence and he was thought to have returned to Saudi Arabia.

The FBI is already investigating "charity" payments sent by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to a family linked to Bayoumi.

She gave tens of thousands of dollars to relatives of Osama Bassnan, a Saudi citizen who was friendly with Bayoumi, in monthly instalments in 2000.

However, the White House said there was no evidence that the princess knew the eventual destination of her donation, which was said to have been given to the Bassnan family to help pay for medical treatment.

Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000 and then went straight to a restaurant where he met al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi, whom he accompanied back to San Diego.

He later later arranged for the men to move into a flat next to his home, paid their rent for the first two months and threw a welcoming party for them.

Sources have said Baymoumi also helped them open a bank account and enlisted a friend to help them obtain social security cards and contact flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons.

 

THE SAUDIS - STRADDLING BOTH SIDES

Exclusive: The Saudis - Straddling Both Sides
Capture of Qaeda ringleader touted as proof of effectivity of Bush administration's efforts
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK

July 7 issue - The capture last week of a Qaeda ringleader in Saudi Arabia is being touted by Bush administration officials as the strongest evidence yet that their effort to prod the Saudis to crack down on Osama bin Laden's network is working.

THE OPERATIVE, 30-YEAR-OLD Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, is described as an Afghan veteran and a key figure in the May 12 bombings in Riyadh that killed 34 people, including eight Americans - an attack that U.S. officials insist finally energized the Saudis to take the terror threat seriously. Al Ghamdi, who comes from the same Saudi tribe as two of the 9-11 hijackers, appears to have taken instructions for the attack from senior Qaeda leaders in Iran - possibly including military commander Saif Al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of Osama's sons. Even more importantly, NEWSWEEK has learned, U.S. investigators now believe al Ghamdi received help from bin Laden sympathizers within the Saudi National Guard - a development that could trigger an uproar inside Saudi Arabia since National Guard members were killed in the attacks.

To root out the bin Laden network, administration officials say, the Saudis have moved more aggressively to shut down charities linked to Qaeda financing and begun working with the CIA on new, highly sensitive covert operations. "The Saudis are doing some incredible stuff right now," says one top counter narcotics official. One possible example: last week's dramatic commando-style raid in Malawi that netted five terror suspects - including one, a Saudi national, who was the local director of the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Special Committee for Relief, a charitable foundation overseen by Saudi Arabia's longtime Defense minister. The five suspects -believed to have been instrumental in helping to finance Qaeda operations in Africa -were rounded up early on June 22 and surreptitiously flown out of Malawi on a CIA-charted aircraft two days later, despite an order from the High Court of Malawi barring their removal. The court is now demanding answers from Mala-wian officials who assisted the CIA in the roundup.

Still, some U.S. officials remain skeptical that the Saudis will continue the crackdown, and suspect the White House may be hyping it for political reasons. Administration officials are extremely nervous about the contents of an 800-page congressional report on the 9-11 attacks that documents apparent financial links between Saudi officials and some of the hijackers. Administration officials are battling with congressional leaders over declassifying the report, but some version is expected to be released in the next few weeks. "The Saudis are an extremely sensitive subject with [the White House]," said one U.S. investigator familiar with the negotiations over the report. Meanwhile, with a large coterie of Qaeda operatives still on the loose and actively plotting against Western diplomats, nearly half the 120-member U.S. mission to Saudi Arabia has been ordered home. The arrest of al Ghamdi was a "big deal," said one U.S. official in Riyadh, "but it's not the whole story."

 

OUR ENEMISE THE SAUDIS

Our Enemies the Saudis
By Michael Barone

U.S. News & World Report
June 3, 2002

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provide - as almost every other country has - manifests of plane passengers flying to the United States.

Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. Far from aiding our efforts against terrorism, the Saudis have worked against them - to protect the terrorists in their own ranks. Also, the Saudis have praised suicide bombings and raised money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Government-controlled Saudi media have frequently spread the vilest kinds of anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda.

Such has been the behavior of those the State Department has long referred to as "our friends the Saudis." It would be more accurate to call them our enemies the Saudis.

Freedoms? Zero for seven. The Saudis run a totalitarian society. Not one of the seven freedoms identified by President Bush in his State of the Union speech - the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious tolerance - is honored by the Saudis. There is no free speech and no freedom of religion (during the Gulf War the Saudis did not allow President Bush to conduct a religious service on Saudi soil), and women are restricted and physically assaulted by religious police who prowl the streets (and, by some accounts, would not allow teenage girls to leave a burning school, lest they not be properly clad; 15 girls died).

But the Saudis are not content to run a totalitarian society at home; they are trying to export their totalitarian Wahhabi Islam around the world. Since the Gulf War, the Saudis have financed Wahhabi clerics and Wahhabi-run mosques and schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Western Europe, and the United States. The results can be seen on the Edgware Road in London or Leesburg Pike in Northern Virginia: Journalists have no trouble finding young people spouting the most vituperative anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda and swearing that they would fight for Islam against the United States. The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force.

So why do some still call the Saudis our friends? Because they have the power to keep oil prices down? That leverage is being reduced by increased oil production by our friends Russia and Mexico. Because they are anti-Communist? Communism is no longer a threat. Because they are used to heeding the mellifluous advice of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar? What has he done to stop al Qaeda or the propagation of totalitarian Wahhabi Islam? Because we depend on Saudi military bases? Despite Pentagon denials, it seems we are wisely dispersing our forces in the gulf.

It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera.

President Bush has said that we must have regime change in Iraq to be safe from terrorism. It is increasingly clear that we must have regime change in Saudi-ruled Arabia as well.

 

SAUDI ISLAMIC CHARITIES SAY MAURITANIA HAS SHUT THEM

Saudi Islamic Charities Say Mauritania Has Shut Them
Reuters
July 22, 2003

NOUAKCHOTT, July 21 Mauritania, which blamed Islamists for inciting a failed coup attempt last month, has ordered the closure of two Saudi Arabian Islamic charities, one of the organisations said on Monday. The attempted coup by renegade soldiers on June 8 followed the arrest of dozens of Islamists and activists of the pan-Arab Baath party sympathetic to Saddam Hussein amid signs of unrest after the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, whose country's economy could be revolutionised by oil reserves discovered offshore, accused Islamists of inciting support for the coup bid, the most serious challenge to his rule since his own coup in 1984.

A representative of the Saudi Preaching Centre said it and another Islamic charity, the Global Islamic Rescue Organisation, had been visited by government officials on Sunday who served them with official notices ordering them to close. Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

 

THE 9-11 REPORT: SLAMMING THE FBI

Exclusive - The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI
By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK

July 28 issue (advance copy) - The FBI blew repeated chances to uncover the 9-11 plot because it failed to aggressively investigate evidence of Al Qaeda's presence in the United States, especially in the San Diego area, where two of the hijackers were living with one of the bureau's own informants, according to the congressional report set for release this week.

THE LONG-DELAYED 900-page report also contains potentially explosive new evidence suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key associate of two of the hijackers, may have been a Saudi-government agent, sources tell NEWSWEEK. The report documents extensive ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. But the bureau never kept tabs on al-Bayoumi - despite receiving prior information he was a secret Saudi agent, the report says.

In January 2000, al-Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles - and then went directly to a restaurant where he met future hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, whom he took back with him to San Diego. (Al-Bayoumi later arranged for the men to get an apartment next to his and fronted them their first two months rent.) The report is sure to reignite questions about whether some Saudi officials were secretly monitoring the hijackers - or even facilitating their conduct.

Questions about the Saudi role arose repeatedly during last year's joint House-Senate intelligence-committees inquiry. But the Bush administration has refused to declassify many key passages of the committees' findings. A 28-page section of the report dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments will be deleted. "They are protecting a foreign government," charged Sen. Bob Graham, who oversaw the inquiry.

The report criticizes the Pentagon for resisting military strikes against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan prior to 9-11, and the CIA for failing to pass along crucial information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi at a terrorists' summit in Malaysia. But the FBI gets the toughest treatment. A few months after al-Bayoumi took them to San Diego, Almihdhar and Alhazmi moved into the house of a local professor who was a longtime FBI "asset." The prof also had earlier contact with another hijacker, Hani Hanjour. But even though the informant was in regular touch with his FBI handler, the bureau never pieced together that he was living with terrorists.

The bureau also failed to pursue other leads, including a local imam who dealt with several key 9-11 figures. The report, one congressional investigator said, "is a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism." Furious bureau officials say the report misstates the evidence. They say the bureau checked out al-Bayoumi - now back in Saudi Arabia - and concluded he had not given the hijackers "material support." As for Almihdhar and Alhazmi, "there was nothing there that gave us any suspicion about these guys," said one FBI official.