EXCLUSIVE: FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 h

[Celerity]

21. It has been all over the MSM for years

Last edited Thu May 14, 2020, 05:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/world/middleeast/pre-9-11-ties-haunt-saudis-as-new-accusations-surface.html

The investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, would most likely have turned up such high-level support if it existed, said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University, who studies Saudi Arabia.

Among the donors Mr. Moussaoui said were in a Qaeda database that he helped create were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Both held high positions in the very government that Al Qaeda was by the late 1990s seeking to destroy, Mr. Gause said.

snip

Prince Turki now heads a research institute in Riyadh and travels often to the United States, where he meets with officials. Prince Bandar was recently relieved of his post as the head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council. Prince Turki did not respond to requests for comment, and Prince Bandar could not be reached for comment.

snip

Mr. Moussaoui is a prolific writer of letters to judges, and it was his letter offering to testify in a long-running lawsuit of 9/11 survivors against Saudi Arabia that led to his deposition last October. Two weeks later, he wrote a federal judge in Oklahoma accusing Prince Turki of instructing a Saudi official to help the future 9/11 hijackers. He also claimed that Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, “gave me money” and sent a large amount of money to the Saudi hijackers.





His wife sent a shedload of money that ended up with some of the terrorists, but of course, they all claim they did not know.

Prince Bandar implicated

Bandar had a very personal reason to be sensitive to the Inquiry’s work. The unclassified version of the Inquiry Report, and press leaks of the content of 28 then still classified pages, implicated Prince Bandar himself, and his wife, in payments made to Osama Basnan, a U.S.-based Saudi suspected of being part of the hijackers’ support system.

Basnan was close to another Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had befriended 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they arrived in the U.S. in early 2000. According to FBI files, Bayoumi provided the pair with substantial assistance – helping with their move to San Diego, allowing them to stay in his home, and co-signing the lease on their apartment. He even threw them a welcome party.

Bayoumi also had extensive contacts with Saudi government entities in the U.S. including at least three individuals at his country’s embassy in Washington. He received a salary as an employee of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, but did no work for it. His income reportedly increased substantially when the future hijackers arrived in California – and dropped when they left. The money trail also led to Basnan, who caught the attention of investigators after having bragged to an FBI source that he “did more for the hijackers than Bayoumi did.” In a search of the Basnan residence, Bureau agents discovered thirty-one canceled checks totalling more than $70,000, made out to Basnan’s wife and drawn on the account of Prince Bandar’s wife Princess Haifa.

Other records revealed that Basnan and his wife each received at least one check from Ambassador Bandar himself. Several of the checks made out to Mrs. Basnan found their way to Bayoumi’s wife, who tried to deposit them in her own bank account. Though the 9/11 Commission knew all this when it interviewed Bandar, it did not question the Ambassador about it.