FBI's 9/11 Saudi Flight Documents Released
By Matt Renner
Newly released documents reveal the FBI suspected that a plane hired to
transport members of the bin Laden family from the United States back to Saudi
Arabia might have been chartered by Osama bin Laden himself. The documents
raise new questions about the FBI investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
Truthout reviewed the 224 pages of newly released documents over the past
two days.
A heavily redacted FBI report on the incident begins by describing a
private jet that was hired to pick up members of the bin Laden family that were
in the US eight days after the 9/11 attacks. "The plane was chartered either by
the Saudi Arabian Royal Family or Osama bin Laden," according to the
declassified pages of the FBI investigation titled PENTTBOMB (page 3).
Subsequent references to the chartered flight in the released documents
state that it was "chartered by the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC"
(page 106). The possibility that the flight was arranged or paid for by Osama
bin Laden was not addressed again in the subsequent 221 pages released by the
FBI.
The FBI report was prepared in response to an October 2003 Vanity Fair
magazine article by Craig Unger which raised questions about the FBI procedures
after 9/11 that allowed six planes of Middle Eastern nationals to fly out of
the United States. Most of the people on these planes were members of the Saudi
Royal family, the wealthy rulers of Saudi Arabia, who have high-level contacts
with the Bush administration. One plane, Ryan International Flight 441, made
four stops around the country on September 19, 2001 to pick up members of the
bin Laden family. According to the FBI, these individuals were half-siblings or
the children of half-siblings of Osama bin Laden with no connections to the
international terrorist. Critics accuse the FBI and possibly the White House of
being complicit in allowing individuals with direct connections to Osama bin
Laden to flee the country after the attacks. The FBI maintains that their
interviews, conducted primarily at airports right before the nationals were to
board planes, were sufficient and did not garner any actionable intelligence or
warrant the detention of any of the nationals.
A set of documents compiled by the FBI in 2003 sheds some light on the
procedures the FBI followed prior to allowing the bin Laden family members and
other Saudi nationals to leave the country in the weeks following 9/11. The
documents also raise new questions.
An internal FBI email described the effort to collect and compile all of
the information about the Saudi nationals. "The point of this mess is a sort of
damage assessment of those people leaving the US" (page 136).
The documents were obtained by the conservative government watchdog group
Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents had
previously been released but all mention of Osama bin Laden and the bin Laden
family were blacked-out by the FBI. After a protracted legal fight, these FBI
redactions and their accompanying explanations were ruled unacceptable by a
Washington, DC District Court judge, who ordered the FBI to reassess the
redactions and re-release the report.
Judicial Watch made the re-released report public on Wednesday, with many
of the blacked-out sections restored. All mention of Osama bin Laden or the bin
Laden family were made readable, revealing the sentence stating that Osama bin
Laden may have chartered the flight that collected members of the bin Laden
family in the days following the attacks.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko responded to the renewed questions
regarding the bin Laden family flight by saying, "There is no new information
here. Osama bin Laden did not charter a flight out of the US." Kolko continued,
"This is just an inflammatory headline by Judicial Watch to catch people's
attention. This was thoroughly investigated by the FBI."
In a statement, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was highly critical of
the FBI handling of the Saudi nationals after 9/11: "Eight days after the worst
terrorist attack in US history, Osama bin Laden possibly charters a flight to
whisk his family out of the country, and it's not worth more than a luggage
search and a few brief interviews?" Fitton was referring to the screening
procedures and short interviews of members of the bin Laden family conducted by
the FBI prior to their flight back to Saudi Arabia.
According to the executive summary of the FBI report, the FBI "conducted
interviews, database checks and security sweeps prior to allowing any of the
flights to depart the US. Before departure, all passengers' identities were
confirmed and compared against watch lists. Investigators verified that there
were no unauthorized passengers aboard any flights, and swept the aircraft and
luggage for prohibited items. Further investigation was conducted following
departure where it was determined to be necessary. No information of
investigative value was learned from the interviews or following the departure
of these individuals" (page 28).
Fitton claims that an examination of the report calls these conclusions
into question. According to Fitton, "These documents prove the FBI conducted a
slapdash investigation of these Saudi flights. We'll never know how many
investigative leads were lost due to the FBI's lack of diligence."
An examination of the previously blacked-out names and sentences revealed
new information. According to FBI agents who interviewed a member of the bin
Laden family, when the family "disowned" Osama in 1994, they did not take away
his share of the massive construction company owned and controlled by the bin
Laden family. A female member of the bin Laden family indicated to
investigators that "when [Osama bin Laden] was disowned by the family, he was
given a percentage of the family business" (page 110). Previously blacked-out,
this sentence is not further addressed in the FBI report.
The report points out that the FBI did not have records for at least one
Saudi national who was listed on the flight manifests. A passenger, whose name
was redacted in the report, was listed on the official flight documentation but
she was never interviewed by the FBI. "If [redacted] was interviewed, it is
unknown as to why no record of that interview can be found ... It is possible
that [redacted] did not board the aircraft at all" (page 170).
Another reference to a missing passenger raised questions for an FBI agent
who was tasked with reviewing the draft of the report. On page 171, the draft
report states: "We assess that [redacted] did not travel on 09/19/2001 despite
being listed on the passenger manifest. Her name does not appear in any FBI
records regarding this flight." This sentence appeared inaccurate to a reviewer
who identified this as a typo. On page 174 the reviewer questioned the
assertion that this missing passenger was a woman. The reviewer wrote "Page 16
2nd paragraph, '... passenger manifest. Her[??] name does not appear ..."
(emphasis original).
The FBI admitted that individuals who might have been useful for their
investigation could easily have left the US in the weeks following the 9/11
attacks. The report concluded that "although the FBI took all possible steps to
prevent any individuals who were involved in or had knowledge of the 09/11/2001
attacks from leaving the US before they could be interviewed, it is not
possible to state conclusively that no such individuals left the US without FBI
knowledge. Upon lifting of flight restrictions on 9/14/2001, any individual
with a valid passport and sufficient funds to purchase flight tickets or
charter an aircraft could leave the US" (page 156).
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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