Saudis Probably Funded 9/11 Hijackers, and the U.S. Won't Do Anything About it. Here's Why. [View all]

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28455-focus-saudis-probably-funded-911-hijackers-and-the-us-wont-do-anything-about-it-heres-why-rsn

During the process of what Perkins called the “Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair (SAMA),” the U.S. Treasury sent Perkins and his team of economists at the consulting firm Chas T. Main to Saudi Arabia. Perkins described his role in a 2004 interview with Democracy Now:

“We worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia — new cities, new infrastructure — which we've done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done …”

The U.S.’s tenuous relationship with Saudi royalty may be upended after recent allegations made by Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker, that Saudi Arabia bankrolled Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the months leading up to 9/11. Lawyers for 9/11 victims are claiming that along with Moussaoui’s revelations about a Saudi embassy official discussing a plot to assassinate President Clinton while he was aboard Air Force One, new evidence will soon emerge in two forms: Declassification of the secret 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report that details Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the attacks, and 80,000 pages of an FBI probe into Saudi funding of 9/11 hijackers in Florida. A 2003 article in Vanity Fair speculated about the contents of the 9/11 Commission Report’s classified contents:

“According to news reports, the classified section charges that there were ties between the hijackers and two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who had financial relationships with members of the Saudi government. Saudi officials deny that their government was in any way linked to the attacks. The Saudis have asked that the pages be declassified so they can refute them, but President Bush has refused.”

Moussaoui’s testimony is problematic for both the U.S. and Saudi governments. Ever since Richard Nixon was president, the Saudis have maintained a close relationship with every president who’s occupied the White House. They even used that access to fly out members of the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family when the FAA grounded all commercial and private flights (including flights for both former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore). These flights were granted permission to leave, and despite the potential for the two dozen members of the bin Laden family aboard those flights to provide invaluable information about where Osama bin Laden was hiding or the depth of his network, those family members were never interviewed by the FBI.