9/11: al-Qaeda didn’t act alone (new book)

[deminks]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8712299/911-al-Qaeda-didnt-act-alone.html#dsq-content

For their new book, 'The Eleventh Day’, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan trawled through thousands of documents, piecing together a definitive account of the attacks.

On September 11, bereaved family members will mark the 10th anniversary of the cataclysmic terrorist attacks on American cities. They will gather around the pools of remembrance at the newly opened memorial, where the names of the 2,982 known victims who died on the day and in the earlier bombing of 1993 are engraved on parapets of bronze. President Obama and his predecessor, George W Bush will be on hand.

Two official inquiries have investigated the who, the how, and the why of 9/11. A decade on, however, many questions remain. Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cohort plotted and executed the operation, but did they act alone? Only days after the onslaught, President Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said the terrorists "live and work and function and are fostered and encouraged, if not just tolerated, by a series of countries… I know a lot… It's a sensitive matter."

(snip)

If there are indications of an Iranian role in 9/11, facts far more troubling have emerged about Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, long seen as a friend of the US, some celebrated in the street on learning of the attacks. A poll of Saudi professionals conducted soon afterwards, suggested that 95 per cent favoured Osama bin Laden's cause. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, into a fabulously wealthy family. For years before 9/11, though, he had supposedly been an exile, a pariah deprived of his Saudi citizenship and disinherited by his family. Not all observers believe that. The former head of the Security Intelligence department at France's DGSE, Alain Chouet, dismisses the revocation of bin Laden's citizenship as "a subterfuge aimed at the gullible, designed to cover a continuing clandestine relationship".

(snip)

President Bush, for his part, welcomed Saudi ambassador Bandar with an embrace and a cigar two nights after the attacks, and received Crown Prince Abdullah to his ranch in early 2002. He said Saudi Arabia was cooperating in the fight against terrorism. The following year, when the report of Congress's Joint Inquiry into 9/11 was published, its final 28 pages were blank. All that remained was the heading: "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters." Virtually the entire contents had been withheld from the public, on the personal orders of George W Bush. The suppressed material, said the inquiry's staff director, Eleanor Hill, was "very disturbing. It had to do with sources of foreign support for the hijackers." Sources made it clear that there had been "direct, very specific links" with Saudi officials and "apparent connections between high-level Saudi princes and associates of the hijackers."

(end snip)

Just throwing this out here. I don't know the authors or their qualifications. I found the Saudi part fascinating. I try to keep an open mind.