TIA now verifies flight of Saudis

[soup]

The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly.

By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
Published June 9, 2004


TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.

The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/06/09/Tampabay/TIA_now_verifies_flig.shtml

apologies if this is a dupe - checked, but didn't see it here.

[Racenut20]

1. Have seen this before somewhere

Believe it said they were kids attending University of Tampa. Falls into the "no harm, no foul" category.

[thebigidea]

5. Uh huh. No harm, no foul. Uh huh. No suspicion. Nothing to see here.

[Bandit]

14. Then why would they LIE about it so strenuously?

:shrug: I agree these kids were no threat but why would Bush* Cabal Lie about it? D'oh They LIE about everything I forgot.

[DainBramaged]

51. Deserving of a bump

:bounce:

[truthisfreedom]

2. bushco. deny, deny, deny, flip-flop... admit when the news is full of

fallout from other bad luck.

[soup]

3. Archive of original (and only?) article from October 5, 2001

>snip<
Grossi said he was told the clearance came from the White House after the prince's family pulled a favor from former President Bush. Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, was part of the coalition that fought the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

To the United States, Saudi Arabia is a key component in the emerging coalition of nations in the war on terrorism.

The White House referred questions on the trip to the State Department, which denied involvement, and the National Security Council, which did not return messages.
full article:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011108145853/http://www.tampatrib.com/MGA3F78EFSC.html
note: my emphases added

-----

and another snip from today's article:

>snip<
Perez, the former FBI agent on the flight, could not be located this week, and Grossi declined to talk about the experience.

"I'm over it," he said in a telephone interview. "The White House, the FAA and the FBI all said the flight didn't happen. Those are three agencies that are way over my head, and that's why I'm done talking about it."

Grossi did say that Unger's account of his participation in the flight is accurate.

The FAA is still not talking about the flights, referring all questions to the FBI, which isn't answering anything, either. Nor is the 9/11 Commission.
>snip<
note: my emphases added
-----

If Perez is unavailable, Grossi is 'over it', and the FAA, FBI and 911 Commission aren't talking about it, maybe it's time that the source was questioned - "Hey, *jr. you got some splaining to do!"

tinfoil hat is feeling a little looser this morning

[UpInArms]

4. more links regarding those flights

from that period of time:

http://www.emjournal.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/may03015.html

24 members of bin Laden's family whisked out of US after attacks
WASHINGTON, OCT 2-2001-AFP

NAME OF SHAME? BIN LADEN AND A COLLEAGUE 'SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN'



As many as 24 members of terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden's family were flown out of the United States after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Saudi Ambassador Price Bandar bin Sultan said on US television.

Osama bin Laden, an heir to the family's construction fortune, is believed to be behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon building that have left about 5,700 people dead or missing.

Prince Bandar said late Monday that most of bin Laden's relatives had come to the United States to study but were flown back to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the attacks after the personal intervention of Saudi King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz.

...more...

http://web.archive.org/web/20011108145853/http://www.tampatrib.com/MGA3F78EFSC.html

Phantom Flight From Florida
By KATHY STEELE [e-mail]
Published: Oct 5, 2001
TAMPA - The twin-engine Lear jet streaked into the afternoon sky, leaving Tampa behind but revealing a glimpse of international intrigue in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America.

The federal government says the flight never took place.

But the two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon their clients out of the state recall the 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly.

In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747 and a trip to their homeland.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Local and federal authorities will say little about the flight.

``It's not in our logs ... it didn't occur,'' said Chris White, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Atlanta.

For private investigators Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez, the bodyguards on the Lear, it was a trip they can't forget.

...more...

[dumpster_baby]

6. this is not about democrat vs republican

it is about how the elite operate within a different society, while we proles go about our trudging lives. They give us bread and circuses and our sporting events and our faux election battles, and we just eat it up. We shout and scream for our respective home teams, "Go Lakers," "Go Cowboys," "Go Kerry," "Go Bush."

It is really sad....

[ladjf]

9. Literature - great post!

[Tellurian]

17. Yes, it's much more than Dem vs Rethug..

The elites, of which, Bush Sr. is a major player.

Read here:

"These criminal perpetrators are members of the cryptocracy, those who rule from the shadows of government.

In his landmark historical study, "Operation Mind Control," author Walter Bowart describes the cryptocracy as "a secret bureaucracy still supported by all the power of the federal government, but which operates outside the chain of government command."

Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams called it "a shadow government in the United States." In Al Martin's own words, it's a "Government Within a Government, comprising some thirty to forty thousand people the American Government turns to, when it wishes certain illegal covert operations to be extant pursuant to a political objective."

Bowart describes the cryptocracy as "a technocratic organization without ideology, loyal only to an unspoken, expedient, and undefined patriotism... Its funds are secret. Its operational history is secret. Even its goals are secret."

http://www.almartinraw.com/uri1.html

[Hekate]

18. Like a villager in the Roman Empire: what's it got to do with me?

Some months back I just got so stunned by the same thought that this image came to me.

Our whole lives as Americans we are taught to believe that we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" and that as individuals we ought to participate and that we can have an effect. Although I've always known there are limits to that ideal, I have lived my life by it.

The cognitive dissonance created by the events of the past four years has been unspeakable. Finally I asked myself, if I am to be a commoner in a smallish city in a great empire, what do the actions of the Emperor have to do with me at all, except insofar as I avoid getting into trouble?

Maybe that's how a lot of decent, good-hearted, and well-meaning people get along in this life.

Brr.

I'm just not ready to give up yet. Of all the things America ought to be, having a sound-asleep populace is not one of them.

Hekate

[dumpster_baby]

27. the internet gave unto me 'cognitive dissonance"

I voted for Reagan. I bought into the whole reactionary right propaganda. I discovered Rush YEARS (decades?) ago. I thought I had really tapped into "The REvolution Cometh."

Then after I had been on the internet a few years, I found out I had ben had....cognitive dissonace, in spades. And now I am pissed.

[TrustingDog]

33. dumpster_baby

I know how you feel, exactly! altho I am not American. Most of my life I believed what the news fed me, no questions at all. I guess I was once a neo-con, because anyone who would challenge the status quo was totally idiotic in my eyes. Anyone questioning the Israeli/Palestinian situation or suggesting that our great leaders had Anything but the pleebs best interest in mind were mentally imbalanced!

Then I started to really read, On My Own, and understand, thanks to the Internet.

This must have something to do with the natural balance in the world - the dark and night, the good and bad, etc., because without the free word of the net now to combat those cloven hooved devils on rampage, oiy, where would we all be right now?

[TrustingDog]

35. I might add...

It was an extremely painful transition. I felt like a kid told that the Easter Bunny ate Santa Claus.

[UpInArms]

36. Welcome to DU TrustingDog!

:hi:

I hope to think that you will not be in such pain here :D

[TrustingDog]

37. thankYou.

I Do feel much better now. How the ugly duckling must have felt, at the end of the story. :)

[kclown]

42. Scary thought

What if (when)a large number of your ex-compatriots come to
the same conclusion at the same time? 

Millions of suddenly pissed-off Americans.  Not a pretty
picture.

[JohnyCanuck]

19. And these days they're taking away the bread

and just leaving us the circuses.

[FreakinDJ]

7. it is not about party lines..Its about Truth vs: Evil

[NNN0LHI]

8. It may be time to start asking if Flight 93 was actually shot down now?

Lot of events that were blown off as "conspiracy theorist" stuff seem to actually be true lately. A complete investigation into who allowed slant drilling by American oil companies based in Kuwait to tap into Iraq's oil fields sparking Gulf War I might be interesting too?

Don

[ladjf]

10. How are be gong to find out about that?

The FAA erased the tapes of the interviews with the traffic controllers who were handling the high jacked planes on 9-11. What possible explanation could there be for that other than a cover up?
Not one word from any of the controllers is public, not one piece of the actual video footage of the FAA radar records, not one black box.
How could there be an innocent motives behind these omissions?

[Bruce McAuley]

11. Ask the local people...

My father-in-law lives 12 miles from the Pennsylvania crash site. He tells me there were papers from the "crash" that landed on his neighbor's land up on the hill from him.
12 MILES away! That's an incredibly long distance for papers to fly if the plane simply augered into the ground, as has been reported by the authorities.
He kinda thinks that's strange, too.
I kinda think the airliner was exploded in mid-air by an air to air missile myself. I believe him before I believe the "authorities".
:hi:

Bruce

[jdj]

41. There are 3 things that Clarke has said during his

book p.r. that are more innuendo than statement of fact, but each time he said one of them, I noticed that he looked straight in to the camera with a very intense look on his face, as if to imply that he was saying something without coming out and saying it. I can't remember which show, these were three separate interviews, but each comment has stuck in my head.


1) Bush and Condoleeza Rice are "unusually close". (wink, wink, nod, nod)

2) Cheney was "in meetings that vice-presidents had never been in before."

and this one

3) that although Bush was not in the situation room on 9/11, he was on the phone with him and was consulted...here he paused and looked at the camera..."if we needed to make a decision about whether to shoot down a plane." When I heard him say this I immediately got chill bumbs, it was more the way he said it than anything. Of course any decent reporter would have asked "shoot down what plane?" but of course this one (it might have been Russert) didn't pry any further.

I think Clarke's coming out in defense of Tenet the last couple of days shows he's flabbergasted that his innuedo's haven't been picked up on.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

12. Al Hazmi????

While there is no manifest for those aboard the Lear flight to Kentucky, Unger says the foreign nationals left Lexington for London aboard a Boeing 727. That manifest lists eight Saudis, two Sudan nationals, one Tunisian, one Philippine citizen, one Egyptian and two British subjects.

Of those, three listed residences on Normandy Trace Drive in Tampa, and all of them held Florida drivers' licenses. They are Ahmad Al Hazmi, then 19, Fahad Al Zeid, then 20, and Talal M. Al Mejrad, then 18, all male Saudis.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/06/09/Tampabay/TIA_now_verifies_flig.shtml

There were two hijackers named Al-Hazmi: Salem Al-Hazmi and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. This Ahmad Al Hazmi couldn't be related, could he?

[fob]

13. Have you seen the pic of Khalil Bin Laden getting on a plane

in Orlando? Go to the link and just after the memos are flashed and you hear some congressman say "we had some airlines authorized at the highest levels of government to pick up OBL's familymembers and transport them out of this country", have your pointer on the pause button and the picture will fade to a shot of KBL preparing to board a plane with text that says it's only days after 9/11/01.

I captured a screenshot of it, but can't get it to post here.

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/windows/large.php

I realize this is Orlando, not Tampa, but if this is a pic of KBL as purported, there must be other pics at other airports right?

Last thought, it's actually VIDEO of KBL not a still picture. I wonder WHO got the footage and how did Moore get it? Creepy, creepy stuff.

fob

Edit: I wonder if Moore's film is the reason they're now admitting to it.

[abracadabra]

16. That's what I thought too--Fahrenheit 911 will expose it so time to admit

then press releases will just say 'so what's the big deal'--We told you--
The Admin will just deny that they ever denied and people who just found out will be too embarrassed to admit that they weren't up on the news...
Emperor's clothes--Yeah I remember, they told us,so what?Let's talk about how Clinton lied about a BJ.

[NashVegas]

15. Someone Wants Bush Out, BADLY

After all the time that was spent debunking Michael Moore's claims, to turn around and release this? Serious shit.

[soup]

20. Timing is everything.

Originally, the Tampa story got buried very quickly and quietly.

Then it was treated as an Urban Legend, and bringing up the subject would get you trounced with a snide, "Prove it. Can't, can you? Yah, just what I thought, you're a *Bush-hating conspiracy-nut."

Saw the article this morning and was nearly in tears. How much more is true? How many more bitter and sad 'last laughs' are there going to be? Why does it feel somehow almost worse rather than better to have this validation?

*sigh*

-----

This afternoon I notice that ONLY the Washington Times picked it up. It's a big news week, so can't expect much, I guess. I'm sharing the link so the St Petersburg Times doesn't stand entirely alone:

Tampa airport confirms mystery flight

Tampa, FL, Jun. 9 (UPI) -- Tampa (Fla.) International Airport has confirmed three young Saudi men were flown out of the facility two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The men, one of them believed to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were flown out although most of the nation's air traffic was grounded, the St. Petersburg Times reported Wednesday.

For nearly three years, the White House and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place, denying published reports.
>snip<

The commission has said it was aware of six flights with 142 people aboard that left the United States Sept. 14-24, 2001. It said it knew nothing of the Tampa flight until it asked airport officials about it in April.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040609-101254-9910r.htm

[UpInArms]

21. you summed up my feelings about all of this quite well

Saw the article this morning and was nearly in tears. How much more is true? How many more bitter and sad 'last laughs' are there going to be? Why does it feel somehow almost worse rather than better to have this validation?

I am tired of being in the select few of the knowing - I would rather have to wear my :tinfoilhat: forever and just be a nutcase.

The agony of knowing so much of this for so long and only now to have it dribbling in itty bitty bits out only increases my horror.

edited to add:

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

...more...

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

[soup]

22. thank you for that, UIA.

More from your link:

>snip<
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
>snip<

Well, that did it. Now I am in tears. Thank you for being here and understanding. Can't imagine where would I be without the DU.

[RedSock]

23. but but but but ...

this is just a wacky conspiracy theory -- that's what everyone told me for months and years ........

[UpInArms]

25. Soup, thank you and all the other DUers

'cause without DU I really really really would need that padded cell.

:grouphug:

[hatrack]

43. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on."

That's exactly it. When someone asks me what it is that I don't like about Bush, I don't even know how to begin.

There's so much, a rotting tsunami of political bullshit - lie upon lie upon lie in foreign policy, religious nut-bag pandering, naked appeals to greed, corruption from top to bottom of this administration and the 535 Congresso-whores, fundamentally stupid, STUPID environmental policy decisions - how, indeed, does one begin?

But I think if I had to sum it up in about 45 seconds, it would be something like this: "OK, so 9/11 changed everything? So, it's OK that people can now disappear, that torture is officially approved if John Ashcroft says it is, and that anything is legal if the president says it is legal? What the FUCK is WRONG with you?"

[UpInArms]

47. like a frog being placed in a kettle of water

that is set on a fire, our fellow citizens have not understood as the temperature reaches the boiling point.

[Invalence1]

45. Thanks for this link

I sent it to my beloved (in spite of his being a Repub) brother. Of late he's been, little by little more receptive to my assertions that dubya just may not be the answer. (And if he were, what on earth would the question have been?!?!?!?) Thanks again.

[UpInArms]

46. Welcome to DU Invalence1!

:hi:

I hate to think what the question would be if Bush is the answer.

A few come to mind:

Who is the most corrupt vile occupant of 1600 Penn Avenue in US history?

Which person has personnally wrought the most damage to Americans?

Who is the poster boy for terrorism?

[NashVegas]

26. I Guess Snopes is Gonna Be Busy With Another Apology

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flight.htm

[teryang]

49. This apology is ridiculous

The FBI did not have a reasonable opportunity to investigate who these people were and what they doing while in the US. They were obviously instructed to facilitate their flight from the US where they would not be subject to legal process.

One can speculate as to the motive for flight. It is commonly understood as a circumstantial indicator of guilt but in the absence of other evidence it means little. The fact that the government lied consistently about this particular flight suggests something else about the kind of dishonest government we have and how little it was interested in getting to the bottom of the most serious "suprise attack" on the United States, ...blah, blah, blah.

The notion that secrecy was meant to protect these foreign nationals from "potential attackers" is ridiculous. Who would these mysterious attackers at airports be? The enemy in such situations are state jurisdictions who have subpoenae and arrest powers. How would "lynchers" avoid airport security? Anyone engaging in disturbances of the peace in the first several days after 911 would surely been clubbed down by police of all stripes instantly with no questions asked.

Why is it that these foreign nationals were given red carpet treatment and others were rounded up like cattle and placed in anonymous detention without due process of law?

[Sterling]

24. But Tucker Carlson said that Richard Clark gave the order.

Said it on crossfire as if the case was closed. And either Begala or the bald dude let it slide. I know how much the Democratic party hates to hold the RW accountable for their crimes but jeez guys if we let this stuff slide we should just kill ourselves know instead of giving the pukes the pleasure.

[Carolab]

28. Clarke admitted it

DAY OF INFAMY 2001
Clarke claims responsibility for bin Ladens' flight
Contradicts 9-11 panel testimony about depature of Osama's relatives

Posted: May 26, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern


© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke says he is solely responsible for allowing members of Osama bin Laden's family to flee the United States immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Link:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38669

[debannbull]

29. another self-inflicted sword skewer?

n/t

[TrustingDog]

30. Clarke is a slimey whore too...

coming off all confessiony and shit, being the hero. I'll bet he's as filthy as all the other gutter rats.

So, on another forum, I brought the Flight of the Bumblebee Bin Ladens up and the neocons are, of course, making excuses and backpeddling like they are born and bred to do.
And keep on asking where the 'proof' is that the administration has been denying this for the past three years - and darn, I can't find an official denial anywhere.

anyone? just so I can shove it in and break it off.

[UpInArms]

39. this one is really new

and seems a bit creepy (can't put my finger on it)

http://www.saudiembassy.net/2004News/Statements/StateDetail.asp?cIndex=403

2004 Public Statement


04/28/2004
Commission staff vindicates departure of Saudi nationals in aftermath of 9-11
The following is the section of the statement issued today by the staff of the September 11 Commission with its findings of Saudi nationals departing the United States shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks:



"National air space was closed on September 11. Fearing reprisals against
Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country. We have not yet identified who they contacted for help. But we have found that the request came to the attention of Richard Clarke and that each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.



"No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called bin Laden flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Osama bin Laden. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.

...more...

here is a FBI denial:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/04/11/unasked_questions/

For its part, the Bush administration has erected the proverbial stone wall on the topic of the Saudi evacuation. The White House told me that it is "absolutely confident" the Sept. 13 flight from Tampa did not take place. The FBI said "unequivocally" it played no role in facilitating any flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said that the Tampa-to-Lexington flight was not in the logs and did not take place.

But they are all wrong.

[SilasSoule]

34. Despite some sword-swallowing comments that Clarke may

have told some reporter from "The Hill" where he takes full and sole responsibilty for the Saudi evacuations, we have to go the story and statements he made on the record and under oath at 9/11 hearings. The jist of which was that he didn't know for sure who ordered it, speculation that it was either The White House or State Departnment. Clarke testified that did not want to sign off on the evacuation until it got pushed up the line until it got approval from above. He got the approval and signed off on it.

[Carolab]

38. He says that he got FBI clearance, though

Instead of putting the issue to rest, Clarke’s testimony fueled speculation among Democrats that someone higher up in the administration, perhaps White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, approved the flights.

“It couldn’t have come from Clarke. It should have come from someone further up the chain,” said a Democratic Senate aide who watched Clarke’s testimony.
Clarke’s testimony did not settle the issue for Roemer, either.

“It doesn’t seem that Richard Clarke had enough information to clear it,” Roemer said Monday.

“I just don’t think that the questions are resolved, and we need to dig deeper,” Roemer added. “Clarke sure didn’t seem to say that he was the final decisionmaker. I believe we need to continue to look for some more answers.”

Roemer said there are important policy issues to address, such as the need to develop a flight-departure control system.

Several Democrats on and off the Hill say that bin Laden’s family should have been detained as material witnesses to the attacks. They note that after the attacks, the Bush administration lowered the threshold for detaining potential witnesses. The Department of Justice is estimated to have detained more than 50 material witnesses since Sept. 11.

Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing.

“This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.

He said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials.

“It’s very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation.”

The Sept. 11 commission released a statement last month declaring that six chartered flights that evacuated close to 140 Saudi citizens were handled properly by the Bush administration.

http://www.hillnews.com/news/052604/clarke.aspx

[jdj]

40. Did not.

Wouldn't authorize it, passed on it.

Clarke is not a slimey whore.

Or maybe I am lost.

[Carolab]

44. It's pretty nuanced--he approved with FBI clearance

“It didn’t get any higher than me,” he said. “On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”

Clarke’s explanation fit with a new stance Hamilton has taken on the issue of the Saudi flights.

Hamilton said in an interview Friday that when he told Democratic senators that the commission did not know who authorized the Saudi flights, he was not fully informed.

“They asked the question ‘Who authorized the flight?’ and I said I did not know and I’d try to find out,” Hamilton said. “I learned subsequently from talking to the staff that we thought Clarke authorized the flight and it did not go higher.”

“I did not at any point say the White House was stalling,” Hamilton added. “They asked me who authorized it, and I said we didn’t know.”

Hamilton said, however, that “we asked the question of who authorized the flight many times to many people.”

“The FBI cleared the names and Clarke’s CSG team cleared the departure,” Hamilton said.

He cautioned that this is “a story that could shift, and we still have this under review.”

This new account of the events seemed to contradict Clarke’s sworn testimony before the Sept. 11 commission at the end of March about who approved the flights.

“The request came to me, and I refused to approve it,” Clarke testified. “I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the — at the time — No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved … the flight.”

“That’s a little different than saying, ‘I claim sole responsibility for it now,’” Roemer said yesterday.

[UpInArms]

31. kick

:kick:

[peacetalksforall]

32. In a LIHOP or MIHOP scenario, the time that Card took to

whisper in Bush's ear was about the time it would take to tell him that the Bin Laden's were all alerted and packed and ready to fly out.

[UpInArms]

48. here's an older article from The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?011112fa_FACT3

THE HOUSE OF BIN LADEN
by JANE MAYER
A family's, and a nation's, divided loyalties.
Issue of 2001-11-12
Posted 2001-11-05

On September 11th, Wafah Binladin, a twenty-six- year-old graduate of Columbia Law School, was finishing the summer holidays with her family in Geneva. Wafah's father, Yeslam, is the Geneva-based head of the Binladin family's European holding company, the Saudi Investment Company. When she learned of the terror attacks on America, Wafah, who lived in a rented loft in SoHo, became frantic. She knew several people who lived and worked in the area of the World Trade Center, and she repeatedly tried to reach friends in New York. "I was in shock," she recalled, when I reached her in Switzerland recently. "All I thought about was the people in those buildings. I couldn't get hold of my friends. . . . I live only ten blocks away. Every night, I'd walk home, down West Broadway, looking up at the Twin Towers. I have pictures of myself there with my friends. We went to Windows on the World. I kept thinking, How can anyone do such a thing?" Later, she says, she heard the news that the prime suspect was her uncle Osama bin Laden. (Some members of the family prefer "Binladin.") "I thought then, Oh, no! I'll never be able to go back to the States again."

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, meanwhile, another uncle, Abdullah bin Laden, a handsome, slightly built graduate of Harvard Law School, learned about the attack while ordering coffee at Starbucks. Abdullah, who is thirty-five and a half brother of Osama bin Laden, rushed back to his apartment to watch the news, arriving just in time to see the second plane crash, into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

<snip>

Around two dozen other American-based members of the bin Laden family, most of them here to study in colleges and prep schools, were said to be in the United States at the time of the attacks. The New York Times reported that they were quickly called together by officials from the Saudi Embassy, which feared that they might become the victims of American reprisals. With approval from the F.B.I., according to a Saudi official, the bin Ladens flew by private jet from Los Angeles to Orlando, then on to Washington, and finally to Boston. Once the F.A.A. permitted overseas flights, the jet flew to Europe. United States officials apparently needed little persuasion from the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that the extended bin Laden family included no material witnesses. The Saudi Embassy says that the family coöperated with the F.B.I. The Saudi government has said that the family signed a statement officially disowning Osama in 1994, a year after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Saudi government also stripped bin Laden of his citizenship, which resulted in self-exile to Sudan. When I asked a senior United States intelligence officer whether anyone had considered detaining members of the family, he replied, "That's called taking hostages. We don't do that."

...more...

[justjones]

50. The people of this country should be revolting over this shit..

I'm not expert, but simple logic would lead anyone to ask these unanswered questions....

As the government has indicated, they had no advanced warning of an impending attack. Once the attack occurred, what evidence did they have that Osama Bin Laden was definitely behind it?

So say the FBI/CIA somehow, by whatever means, confirmed within hours that it was an operation sponsored by Osama....it's not like the general public had this information, or was even aware Osama's family was in residence in the United States. Why would they fear for the Bin Laden's family's safety? The government is the only entity that would threaten the Bin Ladens, and since our government obviously did not consider them a threat because they allowed them to leave, who threatened their safety? Unless the "safety" issue is just a crock of bullshit.

And if it were the Bin Laden family alarmed the United States government that they feared for their own safety, wouldn't that suggest there is the slight chance the Bin Laden was complicit in the attacks and needed to be investigated? What made them so sure they weren't? Why did they let them leave?

It doesn't take a rocket science to smell the biggest pile of bullshit this nation has ever seen. The 9/11 commission was a fucking joke...they haven't answered a damned thing.....I feel like fucking screaming....this is a the very fucking definition of a conspiracy....